Art-making for political ecology: practice, poetics and activism through enchantment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our world’s climate is changing. The ramifications of the current ecological age and the possibility of habitation in – if not strictly post-apocalyptic – very different living conditions than the present, has spurned a pressing need to address our place in a more-than–human frame. A disjuncture between the urgency for concrete action on climate change and the actions of a political class unconvinced and/or slow to move has catalysed the need for action and collaboration across disciplines. The article draws on several creative projects as a springboard for environmental discourse. Notably, it discusses British artist Kate Pattison’s work on glaciers, Eve Mosher’s High Water Line project, and a work involving a local urban river system. Environmental communication transmitted through artmaking may speak to the problem of inaction in a way that employs soft persuasion and affective poetics. This article intimates artmaking can be a type of activism through enchantment, which has the potential to awaken personal and communities’ interests, and thereby encourage them to consider a more eco-centrically holistic future.