Exhibiting Climate Change: The Retreat of the Beautiful Soul

• In Event: 31.027 - The Failure to Act: Climate Change Injustice, Denial, and Education

Abstract

This paper theorizes the phenomenon of climate retreat in the curriculum and pedagogical address (Ellsworth 2005) of large exhibitions that use visual methods, such as art, popular photography and scientific visualization, to represent and engage with global environmental change. I explore the manifestation of this phenomenon in the following exhibitions: (1) High Arctic at the National Maritime Museum (London, UK), (2) the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year (Toronto; London). The phenomenon of retreat as the paradoxical activist desire to inspire a sustainable response to climate change while simultaneously moving-away from any substantive engagement with climate politics. I argue that the phenomenon of climate retreat is part of a broader continuity of Romanticism within public pedagogy on climate change, wherein the attempt to visualize and communicate the abstractions of climate science continue to draw upon what Hegel called the ‘beautiful soul’ of romanticism (See Morton 2007). The beautiful soul is an environmental subject position that yearns to close the gap between humanity and nature while paradoxically maintaining an irresolvable chasm between the two, which cannot be breached without negating the autonomy of this subject position and its’ viewpoint on non-human nature (Morton 2007, 118). This subject position is deeply articulated to western aesthetic experiences of the sublime and the beautiful, which are variously reproduced and deconstructed within the public pedagogy of climate change exhibitions. It is also wrapped up in contemporary environmental discourse and activism (Morton 2007).

Building on emerging research on art and sustainability (Kagan 2011; Gleiniger, Andrea 2011) and visual climate change communication (Doyle 2011;), this paper theorizes the pedagogical pivot point (Ellsworth 2005) of the curriculum of climate change exhibitions. I inquire, what characterizes public exhibitions as places of learning about a just and sustainable response to global climate change, and how do they variously negotiate the ‘beautiful soul’ of environmental communication? Building on Jacques Ranciere’s theory of political aesthetics, sustainability theory and Timothy Morton’s theorization of romantic environmental discourse (2007), I explore the potential for climate change exhibitions to inspire transformative engagements with the global climate crisis and then dissect the persistent reproduction of whiteness, colonial spatial imaginaries and climate retreat within these public exhibitions. I draw on visual methods, document analysis and qualitative interviews to analyze the multifaceted dimensions of these exhibitions.

This paper contributes to our understanding of the role of art and storytelling in socio-ecological learning and curriculum (See Barndt, 2012; Bigger & Webb, 2010; Coutts & Jokela, 2008; Dobrin, 2010; McKenzie, 2008; Payne, 2010; Song, 2012; Wason-Ellam, 2010) and to our understanding of visual climate change communication and education (See Doyle 2011). I show the ongoing legacy of romantic discourse and aesthetics within public communication on climate change, where notions of the beautiful soul and related ideologies, from the sublime to colonial spatial imaginaries, tend to debilitate otherwise creative efforts to visualize and emotively engage with the scientific modeling of planetary futures.

Author

• Andrew Bieler, University of Saskatchewan