M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

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S ince 2001 David Buckland has created and now directs the Cape Farewell project, bringing artists, scientists and educators together to collectively address and raise awareness about climate change. The artists have already been the subject of a film for The Culture Show and a BBC documentary. The art resulting from these fruitful journeys has been shown at the Natural History Museum, London, the Liverpool Biennial and the Sage Gateshead, Newcastle. Buckland is a designer, artist and film-maker whose lens-based works have been exhibited in numerous galleries in London, Paris and New York and collected by the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum, New York and the Getty Collection, Los Angeles amongst others. We met with David Buckland to discuss global warming, the arctic, and how the arts may change our attitudes to the environment. In a nutshell, what is Cape Farewell’s philosophy? We started out as a creative team of artists who wanted to work with scientists for the purpose of creating a new language that may bring to the fore the challenges involved in climate change. The original task that the creative team had to face was to find a language that wider audiences could engage with. Working with scientists helped us to develop a clear understanding of the seriousness and urgency of the problem. Ultimately, someone is responsible for the causes of climate change, and these can clearly be traced in the way we live, therefore, addressing the problem is a cultural responsibility as much as it is a scientific responsibility. In many ways, it is very high on Cape Farewell’s agenda to try to establish a movement that can embrace this cultural responsibility and especially in order to reverse climate change. You are a designer, photographer and film-maker whose works have been exhibited internationally. How did the idea for Cape Farewell come about and why? I was working and still am working as an artist embracing all those media. One of the elements that led to the establishing of Cape Farewell was an interest I developed in a scientific mathematical model that could allow writing, in mathematical terms, the movement of the Atlantic Ocean. I am a passionate sailor, and I was very intrigued by the fact that something as immense and apparently immeasurable like the movement of the Ocean could be written in mathematical terms, using a climate model called HADCN3. Artistically, I was very curious of the capability of translating something so complex. From this starting point, I began to communicate with climate-scientists and gradually started to engage a wider and wider community. So from a simple enquiry, one year later, I found myself looking into something as problematic as climate change. 48 What made you decide to take this professional direction, and how does your pre-Cape Farewell practice as an artist compare to what it is now? What intrigued me about the use of HADCN3, and still intrigues me, is that in a way, the software potentially looks into the future as an element of the software involves predicting the Ocean’s movements as well. These predictions are of course generated by computers and complex mathematical calculations. This concept very much intrigued me, and as consequence, it ended up informing my art. As an artist, one of the many things you can do is fantasize about the future: I realised that the way to understand things is not just based on totally irrational experiences but that we go through decision processes based on emotional knowledge, before we become able to see the structures that lead us into the future. In a way, trying to assess our present and future using computerised predictions is something new in the history of civilization. Climate change is a rather invisible entity and it is very much materialised by future-proofs. So it is essential that we take this ‘futurness’ into account in order to change our lives and affect changes that will otherwise take place over the next 30 years. The climate challenge is a cultural challenge. Cape Farewell is committed to the notion that artists can engage the public in this issue, through creative insight and vision. Could you talk to us about one of the artists involved in Cape Farewell’s projects whose work has achieved this aim in a most effective way? This is a difficult question. Every single artist has come back from our expeditions with outstanding projects. Between others, Ian McEwan, a writer, initially struggled to conceive how he could have found a way to use his experience with Cape Farewell in his writing. However, something special that happened amongst the artists who participated in the expedition moved him to write his next novel on the subject of climate change. Another artist I could here use as example is the architect Peter Clegg, who embraced the challenge involved in visually representing carbon dioxide. The challenge involved the invisibility of the matter associated with the seriousness of the problem it causes in the atmosphere. The work originated from the idea that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is huge and that this is causing major problems, however, it is very difficult to visually represent this, as it is invisible. His solution involved the visual representation of the mass of 1kg of carbon dioxide, which occupies the space of a human coffin. Carbon dioxide should be around 220-230 part per million in the atmosphere. We currently are now nearly up to 400 and scientists are talking about perhaps 500. How do you capture this concept in realist terms? Jarvis Coker, who was on the last expedition, has just written a new song called “Slush” which will be included in his new album.
David Hinton Director David Hinton and film crew at the foot of Kongsvegen Glacier, 2004 � David Hinton Since 2003 Cape Farewell has led seven expeditions to the Arctic, taking artists, scientists, educators, and communicators to experience the effects of climate change firsthand. What happens on the expeditions? How do artists spend their time there? Every time we are on an expedition, a team of scientists joins the artists in order to deliver information on what is happening in different geographical areas. So every expedition aims to engage with science and the scientific side of things. This tends to take up quite a bit of time on the expedition. The schedule of work is highly rigorous as there are many activities that artists can be involved in, including scientific work. I find that artists are usually very curious about the scientific side of the subject. However, we make sure that a certain amount of time is also spent visiting some of the amazing places that are currently endangered. There is a lot of beauty to be seen everywhere. Artists are aware of the fact that the expedition is a very unique experience. We interviewed Gary Hume for a previous issue of the Journal. In our conversation it transpired that his experience of the Arctic through Cape Farewell strongly influenced him as a person and artist. What do you think of his 49 Hermaphrodite Polar Bears which were produced in response to the expedition? Gary Hume was great to have on board, really a lot of fun. He is a great artist and the Hermaphrodite Polar Bear painting really is pure genius. He called me after a few months of having been back from the expedition and asked me to come to his studio to look at a painting that he had produced in response to the trip. There, lying on the floor, I saw the big polar bear, seen from underneath, with its four big paws and unashamedly displaying both female and male genitalia. Rather graphic, however humorous. The painting was informed by the fact that fire retardant chemical used in our furniture is currently travelling to the Arctic and contaminating mammals like bears. The chemicals dispersed in the atmosphere affects their sexuality, creating hermaphrodite polar bears. This is a very interesting and dramatic reality, especially because it is very difficult for us to even imagine that chemicals could travel so far and affect the lives of wild animals in such radical ways. Through our modern development, we had to understand that polluting water in one area was going to affect far geographical realities; we are now facing the equivalent with our atmosphere. This warns us that really, we cannot throw anything into the atmosphere because whatever we throw it in, it may be very difficult to foresee consequences. One of the strongest aspects of the painting is anyway the fact that it is a very engaging painting, one that attracts attention and at the same time, it is a painting that makes a very stark statement; it has a number of layers to it. How have the expeditions changed since the first one took place in 2003? The development has been outstanding. At the beginning we thought we were going to have one or maybe two expeditions. The main aim was to try to communicate with the public. The first expeditions were particular hard work but were also very exciting because at the time, there wasn’t so much interest in climate change. Now there is a lot more attention on the expeditions, and there also are great expectations. The expeditions have changed in the way that we are now targeting different geographical sites, whilst the number of artists involved has also grown. Some of our journeys have not been attempted for centuries. We are also organising ‘walking expeditions’. Next year we’ll be trying to get into the Russian Arctic. The project also involves schools based in the Arctic region. How does communication with these local realities take place, and what are the ecological concerns of local communities? Usually we meet very vibrant communities who are essentially much westernised and are aware of climate change in a similar way that we are. However, they live the change on their own skins in a much more direct way. Of course the melting of ice creates for them
Page 1 and 2: Antennae Issue 10 - Summer 2009 ISS
Page 3 and 4: T his issue of Antennae is fully de
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Page 9 and 10: BEYOND CLASSIC FIELD BIOLOGY: BATRA
Page 11 and 12: Brandon Ballengée DFA 83, Karkinos
Page 13 and 14: empathy in viewers. The intention i
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Page 17 and 18: investigations; for example, explor
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Page 23 and 24: The feminist challenge to patriarch
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Page 31 and 32: L ondon Fieldworks’ latest projec
Page 33 and 34: London Fieldworks Stalin Animal Sho
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Page 37 and 38: E ndangered Species began as a resp
Page 39 and 40: Todd Gilens Top images: Waiting at
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Page 43 and 44: MAINTAINING A GREEN NEWS AGENDA Thi
Page 45 and 46: coverage shaped in this way appeare
Page 47: CAPE FAREWELL: THE ULTIMATE JOURNEY
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Page 53 and 54: Patrick Huse Bølgende landskap, wa
Page 55 and 56: Which brings me back to what origin
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Page 61 and 62: and leave land behind. This region
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