Tuesday, October 14, 2008

While I am also growing tired of the word ‘sustainable,’ I think it has enabled artists to create environmental work without the stigma of being perceived as an environmentalist (a radical).  In the process, the environmentalist stigma seems to have abated in recent years.  But what enabled the mainstream to embrace the idea of sustainability?  I wish it were because of the social justice issues that it inherently includes, but I suspect it was the profitability of so-called sustainable products, and the subsequent commercial and media coverage, that drilled the word into our lexicon.  Certainly disasters like Katrina have helped to remind the public that sustainable design is not just a luxury for the ecologically minded elite, but I don’t get the sense that the general public fully understands the difference between sustainable and environmental.  Beyond Green does a great job addressing the human justice aspect of sustainability.

 

 In some places, those distinctions make all of the difference.  In Brazil, for example, recycled art has proliferated for years.  But because it comes primarily from underserved communities, infamous for drugs and crime, people have stigmatized recycled art and craft much in the same way that they discriminate against the poor.  As one Brazilian woman explained to me, “trash art is just that, trash.  And if it is trash from the slums, it is that much dirtier.”  Now, as environmentalism is becoming increasingly popular in Brazil  (80% of Brazilian NGOs are environment-based), recycled art is drawing new interest in popular culture.  US and European interest in it helps, I am sure.  And I think that as Brazilians become more accustomed to the idea of recycling, their discards will seem more like recyclables and less like trash. But I find it both fascinating and frustrating that the two faces of sustainability-- the ecological and the human— take so much effort to unify in the minds of the public.  And I worry that, as recycling and other ecological efforts take flight in places like Brazil, the technological advancements that result will be reserved only for those who can pay.  How do we as artists respond to this shift, and still remain positive?

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