ECOARTOPS · The Art of Operations: How Contemporary Art Confronts the Anthropocene

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Project objective

This project develops and applies an interdisciplinary method to examine how contemporary art structurally contends with the industrial operations driving the Anthropocene. Since the Anthropocene was defined in 2000 to denote human impacts on the global environment, climate records have continued to be broken. Over this period between specification and crisis, contemporary art has increasingly incorporated materials and processes exacerbating the climate crisis, such as geological mapping software. By examining this deep, functional bond between contemporary art and the Anthropocene, this project will demonstrate that art history has a unique role in responding to one of the most urgent global priorities, identified in the UN Sustainable Development Goals as Goal 13: Climate Action. The main goal of the project is thus to establish a meeting point for art history, ecocritical media theory, the environmental humanities, and political economy. The main deliverables of the project are: 1 method chapter, 3 main chapters (and 2 related journal articles), a compact exhibition, and a book proposal.The objectives of this project are methodological and historical. It develops a method for conceptualising how contemporary art is structurally and functionally bound to industrial processes driving climate change. Drawing on ecocritical media theory and political economy, the project theorises operational ecomedia as the medial, ecological, social and technical functions that link together land, labour, and resources. The historical objective is to apply this method to 3 case studies to reveal how contemporary art becomes enmeshed with 3 key industries driving the Anthropocene: extraction, logistics, and finance. Focusing on the period since 2000 illuminates how international artistic practice is enmeshed with, and challenges, these operational developments. Several well-defined outcomes will be disseminated to academic and non-expert audiences.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• UNIVERSITAT WIEN · WienCoordinatorAustria

Links

• View on CORDIS
• DOI: 10.3030/101275084