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Art and Climate Change

Module description

This module introduces you to how artists have represented, documented, responded and communicated climate change in their art. You will be offered the opportunity to explore a range of practices spanning from photography, video, performance, installation, new media and expedition. You will evaluate these practices through methodologies and theories drawn from art history and visual culture but also learn about definitions from research conducted by geographers, climate scientists, and anthropologists. You will explore key concepts, such as nature; environment; ecology; weather; anthropocene; climate; art and documentation and learn about the value and impact of art in raising awareness, providing evidence, and creating innovation. The module requires no prior knowledge or skills in art or visual culture and is open to anyone with an interest in how climate change can be represented in art.  

Module aims - intentions of the module

In this module you will examine how artists have documented, represented, responded to and communicated climate change in their art. To do this, you will look into theories regarding terms as nature, land, ice, flooding, global warming, ecology, environment, weather, climate, protest, adaptation and prevention.

Through a combination of in-class discussion, readings, presentations, and lectures, as well as first-hand engagement with artworks and documentations, you will develop critical knowledge of different ways of engaging with how climate change is represented in art and gain an understanding of this important and emergent interdisciplinary field.

Viewings and associated readings will exercise your ability to engage in sophisticated analyses and enable you to think about how ideas and concepts relate to and are framed by material practices.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Critically evaluate visual artifacts, practices, concepts and debates pertaining to the representation of climate change in art.
• 2. Identify the ways in which artists have played a crucial role in working with scientists to communicate climate change.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Demonstrate an ability to independently research, present and critically evaluate visual artefacts and practices to do with climate change in relation to the wider cultural, political and scientific contexts of their production and reception
• 4. Demonstrate an ability to critically engage and analyse theoretical ideas and relate them convincingly to historical and contemporary art practices to do with climate change.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Through essay writing, demonstrate a basic capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose in relation to art practice.
• 6. Through research for the essay, demonstrate basic proficiency in research and bibliographical skills, information retrieval, analysis and sharing.
• 7. Demonstrate the ability to work collaboratively, orally, and/or in written form, towards the research and presentation of ideas within set time frames.

Syllabus plan

The module will consist of a series of lectures and seminars, structured thematically to address important themes and practices exploring how artists have engaged with climate change. Major themes addressed by the module will include:

• Climate change
• Ecological and environmental practice
• Documenting, representing and communicating climate change
• Preventing and Adapting to climate change

Further to the above:

Seminars will serve to analyse and discuss in detail particular core readings relative to the overall theme of the module.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

For the re-assessment, there will be a written essay (100%). With proven and accepted mitigation, a component is excluded from the module calculation. Without proven mitigation a mark of zero will be attained.

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Basic reading:

• Buckland, D. (2006) Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change, London: Cape Farewell.
• Gerdes, K., Lippard, L., Smith, S., and Revkin, A. (2007) Weather Report: Art and Climate Change, Boulder: Museum of Contemporary Art.
• Giannachi, G. and Stewart, N. (eds) (2005) Performing Nature, Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, London and New York: Peter Lang.
• Giannachi, G. (2012) ‘Representing, Performing and Mitigating Climate Change in Contemporary Art Practice’, Leonardo, vol. 45, no. 2, 125-131.
• Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment, London and New York: Routledge.
• Kastner, J., and Wallis, B. (1998) Land and Environmental Art, London: Phaidon.
• Knebusch, J. (2008) ‘Art and Climate (Change) Perception: Outline of a Phenomenology of Climate,’ in S. Kagan and V. Kirchberg (eds) (2008) Sustainability: A New Frontier for the Arts and Cultures, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag fuÌ?r Akademische Schriften, p. 242, 261.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=6702  

Key words search

Art History; Visual Culture; Ecology; Environment; Global Warming; Flooding; Adaptation; Mitigation; Climate Change