Bending the Curve – an introduction by Franziska Nori (Co-Creation Art)
Bending the Curve – Knowing, Acting, Caring for Biodiversity
Co-Kreation Kunst: Franziska Nori
WHY CO-CREATIONS?
Bending the Curve is the latest in a series of exhibitions (Trees of Life – Stories for a Damaged Planet 2019/2020, The Intelligence of Plants 2021/2022) in which the Frankfurt Kunstverein collaborates with international natural science research institutes and contemporary artists to systematically examine various aspects around the issue of socio-ecological transformation and the changing relationship between humans and nature.
This exhibition arises from the realization that global biodiversity has been declining at an alarming rate for decades. To halt or reverse this downward trend, it is essential to know what can be done, but even more crucial to engage in effective action. Katrin Böhning-Gaese offers a succinct summary of the complexity of the crises: “Climate change determines how we live, species extinction determines whether we survive in the future.” Bending the Curve is born out of hope and conviction to advocate publicly for a still possible transformation.
Katrin Böhning-Gaese and I have remained in continuous dialogue since the exhibition Trees of Life, our first collaboration with the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research. We share a deeply felt urgency to not let up, to inspire people to commit to the preservation of the beauty and diversity of life on this planet; each through their competence and their networks. Therefore, we decided to tackle this exhibition together and embark on this path with numerous artists, scientists and developers of transformative approaches.
Katrin Böhning-Gaese’s perspective is that of a profound connoisseur of biodiversity connections. In addition to her work as a scientist and as director of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center and as the recipient of the German Environmental Award in 2021, also her involvement as an expert in political advisory bodies and international forums make her an expert in the fight for the preservation of biodiversity.
The Frankfurt Kunstverein sees itself as a cultural forum at the heart of society where artists and experts from various fields can exchange ideas with different civil society actors, leading to a public discourse and challenging political action using the means of art and visual thinking.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ART AND SCIENCE
For years, the curatorial work of the Frankfurt Kunstverein has stood for exhibitions that recognize the visions of science and art equally. From the perspective of both, major social themes are consistently examined and questioned in depth.
Science is a system for observing and categorizing causal relationships and regularities. It is methodical and process-based and subject to rules to make these insights comprehensible. Science can analyse the past but also develop outlooks. It creates models based on existing evidence, data and information. Bending the Curve is the result of extensive information that spans future scenarios. Here, scientists introduce existing knowledge into public discourse so that social and political action can be discussed in a different way, topically, time and again, and aligned accordingly.
Art also generates knowledge. A knowledge that expands the realm of information and factuality to include the experience of feeling. In this way, art develops transformative power: for individuals, as contemplation and, therefore, as a private act; and, beyond that, for communities, as a symbol. Art can examine reality with entirely independent methods and represent reality in an unfamiliar and different way. It creates images and narratives that can subversively alter the world of human imagination.
Thinkers and scientists such as Donna Haraway, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Frédéric Lenoir, Stefano Mancuso, Andreas Weber and many others convey to us that this transformation does not happen through intellect, through knowledge of macroecological aspects or modelling alone. They tell stories of individuals, of individual beings they observe and get to know. They speak of connections between species and forms of communication. It is possible to read in them a kind of ode to love for all living things and the realization that life is so terribly fragile, so terribly ephemeral and so terribly unique. Not everyone is able to view fellow beings with empathy. I am convinced that the ability to empathize with and respect all living things is part of the transformation, and a so-called Deep Leverage Point. When we exert control over other beings and disregard their right to life, this leads to questions of ethics and responsibility. And this also leads to questions of power structures. The arts already make a significant contribution to this awareness.
A work becomes art when the artistic investigation is more than an objective statement, and at the same time, refers to more than subjective experience.
The exhibition Bending the Curve does not intend to perpetuate the swan song of the planet through dystopian narratives but instead follows the voices of art and science that show concrete ways in which each individual, as well as companies, political actors and society as a whole, can pursue the restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity.
KNOWING, ACTING, CARING FOR BIODIVERSITY
First, some thoughts on the subtitle of the Bending the Curve exhibition, which we chose over the course of two years of research as a programmatic statement: Knowing, Acting, Caring for Biodiversity. It became an essential prism for the curatorial work that determined the underlying stance and selection of exhibits. The works of the invited artists represent more than mere symbolic references. We made the selection to present exemplary projects and initiatives that have actively committed to socio-ecological transformation.
After all, people around the planet have set forth to become part of the change. Most exhibits in Bending the Curve were created with the attitude and idea of co-creation: with other people, but also with non-human beings. The invited artists seek ways to overcome the exploitation of planetary materials and beings. They cooperate with them, know their characteristics and behaviours, and engage in dialogue with them. They pursue changed, paradigmatic perspectives by attributing “agency”, or the power to act, to non-human life forms and acknowledging them. In doing so, they chart a new path to place humans as part of a whole, where fellow beings are no longer seen hierarchically (or less so). The artists and scientists are part of the rooting of this new, and at the same time old, thought substrate. Their works and methods indicate what changed action and prioritization of values can look and feel like. They bear witness to knowledge, action and a deep care for, and taking care of the departure from human anthropocentrism towards the idea of transformative naturecultures (Donna Haraway, 2008).
Short-term thinking, thinking in terms of government and electoral cycles, maximizing growth and annual financial statements and the exploitation of communities and landscapes, have come under great pressure. There is a battle of worldviews underway, where global communities are demanding thinking and action that is socially and ecologically just and intergenerational. The consequences of the climate crisis and species extinction will affect everyone equally; humans, animals, plants and entire ecosystems, regardless of political or cultural affiliation. And here we are all called upon, as civil society and as the human species, to engage in our immediate environment in transformed, more conscious and responsible action.
Will we achieve this goal together? What does it mean to break with the familiar and reinvent it? How does change work, what does it look like?
What we have experienced in the many months of research, countless conversations and encounters with artists, researchers, scientists, new material designers and social scientists is that a fundamental transformation towards changed action is indeed already underway. New knowledge is developing in countless places, giving rise to initiatives, laboratories, studios and cooperatives, as well as international research projects and startups.
BENDING THE CURVE – FURTHER POSITIVE APPROACHES TO FEASIBILITY
The title of the exhibition pays tribute to the concept of Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss. The conservation biologist Georgina Mace coined this phrase in her eponymous text in Nature Sustainability in 2018. Building on this work, David Leclère and an international network of roughly 60 scientists and 46 institutions have developed the first comprehensive models of different future scenarios. We were able to enlist Leclère for collaboration and thus open up another resonance space in the cultural world for this crucial endeavour. In his text contribution, he presents the work and goals of the Bending the Curve initiative.
The proposed courses of action of the Bending the Curve initiative are voices from the natural sciences calling for change directed at civil society, politics and the economy. As accompaniment to socio-ecological transformation, an international, interdisciplinary debate with countless positions, focusing on the necessity of a great mindshift is taking place in the social sciences. At issue are beliefs and orientation patterns that locate societies and individuals in the world and lead to changed practices. Publications such as Uwe Schneidewind’s Die Große Transformation: Eine Einführung in die Kunst gesellschaftlichen Wandels (2018, The Great Transformation: An Introduction to the Art of Social Change), Maja Göpel’s The Great Mindshift: How a New Economic Paradigm and Sustainability Transformations go Hand in Hand (2016), Paul Hawken’s Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation (2021) and Karen O’Brian’s You matter more than you think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World (2021) are just a few that show a positive habitus of feasibility already in their titles.
SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Often overlooked in natural science and economic contexts is that socio-ecological transformations must also be accompanied by cultural transformations, not just material ones. What are always negotiated together with the demand for a more responsible use of natural resources and fellow beings are possible models of economic systems. Naomi Klein’s publication This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate from 2015 can be mentioned as one representative example here. Debates on sufficiency and post-materialism, however, exclude those who do not belong to the affluent classes and world regions and therefore cannot afford to continue to abstain. Calls for renouncing growth must be made with a view to solidarity and include different perspectives.
Under pressure is the hierarchical imbalance, the exercise of power, and thus the use, the objectification of disenfranchised beings. At issue is a new relationship, more of a collaboration and coexistence of humans with other humans and also non-human beings and between different systems. Power relations, class structures and shifts in outdated hegemonies between the global North and South demand new interpretations of history. There is a struggle for narratives that reflect the respective location of a society and its historical experience. A change in relationships is required. “Care”, “ “healing”, reciprocity” and “repair” are but a few terms for a changed attitude.
Change arises from historical examination and manifests itself as a collective demand for care, healing processes, equality and solidarity. It affects cultures and communities that in the past have suffered from colonial injustice, violent conflicts, cultural theft, displacement and oppression. And it affects the exploitation of landscapes that were once places of significance and cultural identity for the people living there.
CHANGED PERSPECTIVES AND FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
How do we break with the duality of “culture vs. nature”, with enlightenment, and attempt new ways of being in the world? Can old and sometimes lost knowledge be revived? Can economics be practised beyond industrial utilisation and capitalist exploitation? The promise lies in connecting old and new knowledge and applying it in adapted form to the specificity of each place and context – a form of knowledge that arises from its situational anchoring: situated knowledge (Donna Haraway). This idea fundamentally questions the notion of knowledge as an objective, universally valid and neutral reality. Knowledge is thus understood as a dynamic quantity, not as an absolute reality. It emerges through individuals and groups at a particular historical moment, in a specific place, with a specific experience.
The economist and social scientist Enrique Leff defines the environmental crisis as a consequence of the crisis of Western thinking. To break the dominance of prevailing knowledge views and to promote a knowledge dialogue, an engagement with different cultures is necessary. This includes not only different languages and cultures but also different ideas and definitions of human communities, nature and the corresponding mutual dependence.
Increasingly, indigenous, non-Western conceptions of nature are being conveyed, actively remembered or newly discovered. They are being recognized and are expanding scientific designs in biodiversity research. There are not only two basic types of concepts of nature (scientific or mythological), but a heterogeneous variety. Many artists and scientists are participating in this fundamental shift. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Dr. Teresa Ryan, Dr. Max Liboiron and Elizabeth A. Povinelli with the Karrabing Film Collective – to name just a few – represent changed principles that practise a reconnection of local knowledge with natural sciences in different cultural contexts. Data, information and quantifying factual knowledge are increasingly supplemented by the dimension of emotion to include an existential experience of connectedness.
Examples can also be found in agriculture. Faced with climate change, soil erosion and water scarcity, agriculture faces enormous challenges on a global scale. In addition to more sustainable bio-economies, numerous projects have emerged that use traditional methods such as agroforestry and permaculture as viable paths for future-oriented action.
If reality is a cultural construct based on an imagined relationship between a subject and its counterpart in the world, we are currently faced with the challenge of once again redefining ourselves.
What we are experiencing today is the struggle for new collective narratives. Transformation can also be seen as an opportunity. Along with knowledge and accountability, responsibility and a sense of justice are skills of the future. Solidarity and empathy, curiosity and encounter. Perhaps they come together in the idea of care. Care can arise from fear of the consequences of a major threat and motivate us to accept responsibility. It has the power to generate meaning and (re-)establish a bond with what is paramount.
Franziska Nori, Director Frankfurt Kunstverein
