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Connecting ARTJOG 2019 and the Anthropocene
Indeed art should be celebrated by everyone. If ARTJOG has made a commitment to the environment, it should extend to the exhibition and other events in ARTJOG. Addressing sustainability and understanding the environmental impact of ARTJOG could be on ARTJOG’s agenda.
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Thought-provoking: Visitors view Andrita Yuniza Orbandi’s Whirlwind of Time at the opening of the prestigious art festival, ARTJOG MMXIX. This year marks a milestone, as the month-long event has rebranded itself as an art festival from its 2008 inception as an art fair. (JP/Tarko Sudiarno)
T
his year’s ARTJOG in Yogyakarta is using the theme: “Common | Space”. Given the current situation in which we are confronted with a myriad of spaces where we intermingle or overlap one another, I find common space useful as it presents the notions of heterogeneity and connections.
How ARTJOG 2019 is using art as a platform for discussing the environment and the Anthropocene epoch and for raising awareness of the current ecological crises is interesting. Coined by Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen in the early 2000s, the Anthropocene references a geological epoch that started when humans became the main agents of geologic change.
Although etymologically the term Anthropocene has had a conflicted history and the notion of the Anthropocene has been disputed, it has been widely used in various fields by scientists, politicians, anthropologists, humanists, artists, curators and others as a platform to promote an awareness that we are making indisputable impacts on the environment on a global scale.
In the month-long ARTJOG 2019, we can see how artists and curators develop narratives about the environment and the Anthropocene. Some artists present artworks that reconfigure the relationship between humans and the environment. Some have engaged with environmental degradation, climate change, deforestation, plastic problems and exploitation of the Earth in their works.
In relation to the climate in particular, Bruno Latour, a French philosopher and one of the advocates of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in science and technology studies, proposes a term, “common cosmopolitical concern”, to highlight the fact that the climate has always been important to people, that it is a shared milieu we occupy and that it deserves our deep attention.
Apart from the exhibition, ARTJOG, held from July 25 to Aug. 25, has clearly helped boost the local economy of its host city Yogyakarta. It creates more business opportunities, including for hotels, transportation services and food production. Many local art galleries have also benefited from the event by exhibiting their own works.
Ironically, ARTJOG seems to have left behind a large carbon footprint, like for travel and electricity. People traveling to and from ARTJOG by flying, driving, or using other means of transportation may account for most of the carbon emissions of this event. It is likely that ARTJOG has consumed a huge amount of electricity for lighting, operating appliances, electronics, computers, cooling indoor spaces and other things.
