Gabriella Giannachi is a Professor in Performance and New Media as well as the Director of the Centre of Intermedia and Creative Technologies at Exeter University. After graduating from Turin University in Modern Languages and Literatures she finished her PhD in English at Cambridge University. Since her first publications in 1999 she has published numerous books, articles and conference papers on the subjects of Performance Art, New Media, Virtual Display and Modern Technologies.
For her recent research projects she has worked with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Tate, the British Library as well as the San Fransisco Art Institute and the Stanford Libraries.
In 2014 she became an elected member of the Academia Europaea in recognition of her research work over the past decades.
In 'Presenting, Performing and Mitigating Climate Change in Contemporary Art Practice' from 2012 Giannachi analyses the connection of Nature and Culture and investigates how the arts generally address Climate Change within the categories of Representation, Performance Environments and Interventions.
The Essay was published by MIT Press as a general article focusing on Environmental Issues. Due to the publication the intended audience are likely academics, environmentalists and other leading industry professionals.
While Giannachi has published articles on Performance Art and New Media before, this article seems to be directed more towards scientists and environmentalists to make them understand an artists perspective as it analysing art works and collaborations artists and scientists for a large section of the paper.
Focusing on two major groups Cape Farewell and Artcircolo, that centre their works around the complex discussions of climate change, Giannachi analyses individual artworks and their effectivity in supporting the awareness around climate change while finding examples that can be connected to all, two or just one of the above mentioned categories.
Among her findings Giannachi notes how the most effective artworks 'allow citizens to act as agents of change' (p.129 - [1]) and that the 'translational work involved in presenting data to the public within the artistic context' (p.128) is key to successfully educating an audience and encouraging them to commit to behavioural changes.
In the final sections of the essay, which for this analysis I'd like to focus on, Nature is compared to Culture with the realisation that 'a change in Nature is a change in Culture'(p.129).
According to Giannachi Culture and Nature are deeply interlinked and Nature can really be seen as a part of culture. 'Culture therefore is not only a means to represent, perform and understand nature but also a way of changing Nature' (p.129) We as people rely on nature to support our build environment and our culture, however if Nature starts changing, society and cultures will have to adapt to these changes.
However, recent developments see the need for culture to be the active change in order to push Natures changes in the right direction. Giannachi believes like W. Anderegg and R. Taplin that this change is best encouraged throughout the arts, however in order for art to address the necessary changes and in turn to appear as reliable sources of information to the audience the artworks need to be based on scientific facts and proven research.
Through different art forms it will be possible to visualise changes happening over an extended period of time and therefore display the effect on nature as well as culture. When Climate Change Art Works address both of these elements it will be possible to transform the audiences into thinkers, participants and lastly activists.
Transforming audiences into individual thinkers has been the goal for many artists before and extensive studies on the benefits of audience interaction have been at the forefront of the creative industries.
Giannachi adresses this sensitive topic by referring to N.Taleb's 'Black Swan Theory' published in 2007.
According to Taleb artworks can address the experimental (1) or the cognitive (2) systems of the public.
While System 1 used in the arts would present nature and climate change as an experience for the audience, System 2 is what makes an audience think about it. The most effective artworks to encourage long-lasting behavioural changes in society are therefore the ones that produce instinctive reactions while also generating debates and informing the audience on what it is they see.
In 'Representing nature: art and climate change' M. Miles makes a similar point, however he notes that too many information on the subject of climate change and the representation of 'worst case scenarios' can have the opposite of the intended effect and will result in the Audience doubting the information.
If Art represents Climate Change in a way that is too difficult to comprehend for society, the given message will be rejected which based on the essay title word choice 'mitigating' Giannachi is also aware of. Furthermore audiences don't want to be told what to think. It is a slim line to create an artwork that encourages the viewer to think about the context and then reach an intended conclusion without pre-dictating too much. Regarding climate change the same sensible approach must be taken when exploring who (society?) is to be blamed for the situation within the art works.
While there are different opinions on the role of the individual, Miles suggests that artworks should be focused on giving solutions and not accusing the audience.
Referring here to Giannachi's comment regarding the importance of accurate information to educate the audience, climate change solutions are only partially based on facts since they are predicting an outcome yet to be decided. While they are using historic data to record the recent developments, it can not be accurate on the results global warming above 1,5°C will have.
This debate is one of many currently discussed as it is generally agreed upon that science needs the creative industries to encourage lasting change.
However the best course of action, which media form, how much information and which level of audience engagement are some of the questions that shape the general discussion about the role of art and climate change that I hope to find some answers to in my further research specifically looking at the role of photography as a representation of the truth and therefore an art form trusted in the past to tell society what is happening.
Bibliography:
[1] Paulos, E. et al. (2007) "Sensing Atmosphere", ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, 6-7 November, Sydney, Australia
Anderegg, W. (2010) Editorial Review Essay - The Ivory Lighthouse: communicating climate change more effectively. Springer Science and Business Media B.V. 101(3): 655-662
Giannachi, G. (2012) Representing, Performing and Mitigating Climate Change in Contemporary Art Practice. Leonardo, 45(2):124-131
Ingold, T. (2000) , The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelyhood, Dwelling and Skill, London and New York: Routledge, p. 41
Miles, M. (2010) Representing nature: art and climate change. Cultural Geographies, 17(1): 19-35.
Taleb, N.N. (2007) The Black Swan, New York: Random House, p. 81
Taplin, R. (2014) Contemporary Climate Change Art as the Abstract Machine: Ethico-Aesthetics and Futures Orientation, Leonardo 47(5) :
509-510.
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