Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The paper seeks to understand the extent of an artist’s civic function and the communicating potential of the artistic output in climate change discourse. The topics of the Anthropocene and climate crisis have predominated calls for artist residencies, creative funds and exhibitions, culminating to a conflicting motivation for the artist’s work. First, they require autonomy to pursue projects in line with their creative interests. On the other hand, artists must accommodate the interests and objectives of their patrons, which in the case of the Anthropocene discourse, requires participation in the communication, education and dealing of climate crisis. This paper takes an interdisciplinary look into the artist’s role in climate change discourse, through political science and cultural economy. The artists here are regarded as “self-authorized representatives” (Urbinati & Warren, 2008) whose representative function is that of a trustee rather than a delegate. Such an arrangement balances the need to accommodate the interests of patrons and marquee issues while giving artists liberty to augment, shape, and challenge the public interests and the demands of the market. Simultaneously, the artistic output is challenged as a means of communication of climate change, based on Bourdieu’s (1979) class and taste distinction and Jasannof’s (2021) hegemony of epistemic knowledge. As such, the artistic output reaches the audience with pre-existing cultural and ecological capital, without creating further communication bridges.