What’s Next: Excerpts from the Introduction

Introduction to the Introduction

A pet peeve occupies the introduction of this book. This peeve stems from the contradiction between art’s esteem as a cultural beacon, and its disregard for a cultural challenge that defines the current era – the imperative to replace polluting, wasteful, and depleting material interactions with those that are environmentally beneficial, or at least harmless. This narrative earned the place of honor in the book because the entire project was sparked by indignation that so many contemporary art producers, consumers, instructors, and commentators ignored the material consequences of creating art. Visits to art classrooms and art galleries confirmed the misguided presumption that art was exempt from environmental responsibility.

Over time, my peeve escalated into a campaign because it was bolstered by professionals representing a great range of disciplines who were articulating comparable environmental considerations. The campaign developed into a crusade when I discovered that calls for sweeping material change constituted an emerging philosophy, referred to as New Materialism. This crusade became the book you are reading because I realized that artworks that were materially and conceptually allied with environmental mandates were being created by an international roster of artists that confirmed the mandates proposed by New Materialism philosophies. Their timely innovations had never before been assembled for study and recognition.

This book was given the title What’s Next? to highlight the fact that today’s artists confront the age-old quandary of choosing between conformity and innovation. Conformists reinforce existing cultural norms; innovators introduce imaginative alternatives. In art, these norms refer to style, theme, format, medium, and tools. Because the tools and mediums that typically line the shelves of art studios are manufactured with little regard for their environmental impact, using them perpetuates the environmental disregard that accompanies Consumer Materialism. It requires a nonconformist to assert that every material choice by an artist is implicated in humanity’s impact upon the planet’s soils, waters, air, and life forms. These innovative artists locate life-affirming material choices at the top of their agendas.

Where Are We Going?

If a map existed that could locate points of view presented in this book, it would appear as a large region without a clear boundary. Its edges would spill into three dynamic zones of contemporary exploration: emerging philosophical discourse, environmental strategies, and avant-garde art. Although this region’s borders are fuzzy, the territory of philosophy–environmentalism–art that it charts marks the precise spot where a far-reaching shift in human consciousness is currently being formulated. Each component of this trio is exerting an influence upon the others. As a result, the creative contributions of individuals who identify as philosophers, ecologists, and artists comprise a rich blend of metaphysics, science, and culture. The new commons, referred to in this book as Eco Material art, is fortified by the intellectual rigor of philosophers, made credible by the exacting investigations of ecologists, and enriched by the creative imaginations of artists. This trio of contributors is introducing a sweeping alternative to the status quo by both embodying and envisioning human interactions that are rooted in the material substances and entities that comprise the ecosystems of the planet. It thereby diverges from reliance upon the digitized transmissions, communications, explorations, and entertainments, and the glut of merchandise that currently define contemporary lifestyles. This book honors the many artists whose fertile imaginations are seeding this Eco Material commons with heartening answers to the question, ‘What’s next?’

By paying tribute to matter, materiality, and materialization, the artworks that are explored in the following chapters attend to the urgency of mounting environmental afflictions. These bold art initiatives reacquaint the public with the lapsed wonders of weight, texture, moisture, temperature, fragility, suppleness, elasticity, bulge, hollow, contour, and a host of other physical properties that are being neglected in favor of data, simulations, and digital transmissions, as well as subjected to the casual disregard that surrounds mass-produced commodities. While such fundamental qualities of materiality have been accounting for life on Earth for the past 3.5 billion years, currently they are accounting for extinctions, smog, pollution, industrial waste, water shortages, radioactive waste, oil spills, and an alarming litany of other planetary perils. The creative explorations among Eco Material artists present materiality as a strategy to convert society’s environmental neglect into responsible stewardship. Their radical strategies and conceptualizations introduce three emerging frontiers of contemporary culture.

  1. Within the philosophical context, Eco Materialism diverges from the abstract conceptualizations that have dominated recent philosophy.
  2. Within the social context, Eco Materialism diverges from the dematerialized forms of communicating, working, shopping, learning, and playing.
  3. Within the art context, Eco Materialism diverges from the elimination of materiality f rom such recent art forms of creative expression as conceptual, relational, body and sound, as well as social practice, and performance art, and art that registers the dazzling antics of cyber technologies .

These deviations from current norms suggest that the answer to ‘What’s next?’ may not be accounted for by more extensive automation, more advanced robotics, more powerful technologies, and more enticing commodities. Eco Materialism envisions ‘What’s next?’ for humans in the twenty-first century in terms of respectful interactions with the tangible and measurable conditions of Earth systems. Within this book, this vision is provided by artworks that register the functional consequences of their materiality, and that cultivate responsible material interactions. The insights they convey may also be foresights that anticipate the material interactions of world politics, market economies and human fulfillment, as well as the production of art.