Representations of Climate Change: Climate Porn and the Consumer Sublime versus Performative Visual Art

• In Event: The Arts and Environmental Advocacy: Imagination, Responsibility and Utility

Abstract

What does climate change look like, and why does it matter for the purposes of ecological advocacy? In a strictly scientific sense, climate change is a statistical pattern of overall increasing temperatures amidst the numerical "noise" of regular weather variation. This means that no individual image of extreme weather or melting icebergs "properly" represents climate change. Yet in order to express the urgency of the issue and to promote behavioral change in viewers, popular and mass media have turned to what some critics have called "climate porn": bigger, bolder, more urgent, more sublime representations of upheaval and devastation meant to elicit emotional responses. Such representations have tended to focus on the results of climate change and have come to stand in for climate change itself. Recent studies have shown that audience reactions to climate porn have resulted in ambivalence at best, or depression and disengagement at worse, especially when paired with the common trope of "ten small steps you can do to save the planet."

A particular genre of performative, interactive visual art offers an alternative mode of representation for climate change. Public projects such as Eve Mosher's High Water Line build participation and dialogue into the structure of the piece, widening the interpretive framework of climate change. This paper considers audience responses to High Water Line and other interactive visual art projects in light of the desire to promote behavioral change in audience members.

Author

• Max Liboiron, New York University