Abstract

A project of disjunction and conjunction – the aesthetics of climate change

In a way it is all a matter of aesthetics. In a way climate change is all a matter of sense perception. Whether talking about changes in the level of CO2, variations or deviations in the Earth’s orbit, mountain-building, continental drift or solar radiation, the question about what to do implies a clear understanding of what is happening. That question is a question of aesthetics, that question is a question for art.

But if climate change is a matter of and for aesthetics, then what kind of aesthetics? What sort of aesthetics does art use to either establish connections or destabilise already fixed notions of sense perception when we talk about climate change? Are we talking about an aesthetics of the sublime, such as the one that has been proposed by the historical and neo-avantgarde for decades through their experiments with effects of shock, alienation or acts of detournément, or are we talking about an aesthetics of the beautiful, of that which doesn’t break with logical forms, notions of symmetry and delivers by providing the much needed constructed whole?

• Lars Bo Løfgreen (DK) is a Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Information and Media Studies at Aarhus University. Current research interests include the aesthetics of resistance, locative media art, philosophy of aesthetics as well as the interplay between historical and neo avant-garde movements.

Full text (PDF) p.  158-159