I hope that this blog will serve as a catalyst for constructive conversation as well as a kind of vector for transmitting some of the insights and experiences i have had while making earthrise and from the last six or seven years of making ecologically-engaged art .
Some time ago after years of making earthrise full-time i became overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness to bridge the gap between the scale of the challenges that we face and the solutions at hand which seemed pretty paltry and piecemeal by comparison. But things began to change for me after i had the privilege to speak with author & founder of 350.org Bill Mckibben in New York . When I asked him for some advice on what we ordinary concerned citizens could actually do to try and make a difference he told me- “the first thing you got to do is not be an individual”. Soon after that i realised that the people and projects that we feature on the show just are what early stage revolution looks like! it is when the small ideas join together that IS the big idea - revolution is made up of a diverse and integrated ecology of lots of little revolutions and the act of telling and sharing stories is in a sense the glue that binds it all together
so i got inspired to start a this blog ‘Earth-Wise’ to share ideas and deeper insights which don’t make it into the final cut of our films or which come out of my other creative projects in Art,Space & Nature in which i experiment with “thinking through making” (Ingold 2013) and create objects of significance to help communicate my thoughts and feelings about this entropic carnival in which we earthlings are subsumed .
In troubled times such as these - shifting focus back and forth from reporting on the way things are – to re-imagining who and what we are may be understood as a natural response to fully apprehending the scale and severity of the environmental catastrophe which is currently unfolding. Perhaps during the sixth mass extinction, it is natural for thoughts to take a turn toward the metaphysical. To comprehend extinction (a species un-becoming) we must at least try to come to terms with what it is to be in the the first place, either in the material sense (looking inwards all the way down to the strange, profoundly relational world of quantum particles or outwards- to examine the invisible power of story – the intangible frameworks of perception which constitute our shared consensus reality.
Like the agar jelly in a lab-experiment, Story is the translucent stuff fundamental to all forms of culture… it is our growth media, firing our imagination, motivations, purposes and passions. Stories are the scaffolding of our homes and the mortar and the flagpoles onto which we tie our identities.
But our old story is broken, no longer “fit for purpose” … Things are changing so rapidly that we are in desperate need of a new set of concepts to bridge the nature-culture gap and address the mass cognitive dissonance brought about by trying to live as ‘business as usual’ despite the apparent consequences of overpopulation and unfettered capitalism.
In the last ten years of making earthrise - i have had the pleasure of meeting many individuals and communities and businesses who are rising to the environmental challenges that we are facing - who are (to borrow a line from Donna Harraway) ‘Staying with the Trouble’ that is to say - looking into the eye of the coming storm - and rather than turning away and plugging their ears they are responding with courage and creativity to develop new ways of feeding & clothing ourselves, new ways of powering our lives and new structures in which to live and build more resilient communities. These innovations are an increasingly important part of living in the Anthropocene but as Bill Mckibben said - ‘sometimes a new metaphor is just as powerful as a new kind of solar panel’ so with Earth-Wise I’m interested to include insights and experiences shared with the scientists and solution-seekers but also with like-minded artists and academics who are combining creativity, intellect and emotion to develop new conceptual frameworks to help think about time and place and life and death and redefine the very idea of progress and success outside of simply striving for perpetual economic growth.
So expect interviews with urban farmers, Eco-entreprenures and community energy pioneers like Agamemnon Otero MBE, Songnam Wanchuk, Dr Arne Fjørtoft along side poetry, elemental art and eco-philosophy from the likes of Dr Michelle Bastian, Donald Urquhart , Alex Hackett and Elizabeth Oglevie
I’ll leave the comments section open and freely invite anyone to participate in the conversation - with feedback and links or any suggestions.