"I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW": HOW ANTHROPOCENE SUCCEEDS IN STAYING SILENT

Museums on Earth | Jordan Fee

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A few months ago, on one of those days that residents of Toronto became very familiar with over the course of the summer - heat radiating from every surface, transforming our very clothes into miniature greenhouses - I took a brief walk with my partner. As we strode westwards down Queen Street, I remarked that this scorchingly hot day was only a tepid representation of what, one day, would become our daily life. At this, I received a very curt response: “Honestly, I don't want to talk about that right now.” While I was joking around, I did believe my comment to be truthful; nevertheless, I understood the desire to not talk about how it was just going to get hotter, and hotter.

An audience member watches a video of burning ivory tusks, Photo courtesy of Jordan Fee

It is difficult to not be aware of the issue facing the entire human population - just last week, a report was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that detailed the startling pace at which climate change is advancing upon us. Yet for some reason, we don’t seem to talk about these issues very much. People mentioned this report to me in the days following its publication, but since then the people have grown silent. Anecdotes aside, the conversation that I had with my partner spoke to something larger. I realized that it is rare that we have to confront our day to day realities on this subject. The conversation is in our midst, yet it exists almost nowhere. If we are going to get any better, then someone needs to say something.

Why not in a museum?

Recently, an exhibition opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario titled Anthropocene, featuring works from celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and award-winning filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. The title of the exhibition makes reference to a new era in the development of our planet, where humans now exert more energy than the earth’s own natural forces. This idea was not coined by the makers of this exhibition; French scholar Bruno Latour has written extensively on the topic, an example of which you can find here. (Note: you can also find an older post from Musings titled “Curating the Anthropocene”, which provides a different perspective on this new era!)

Reading Latour’s essay, one finds a pressing argument that does not attempt to obscure the realities of our current situation. When I visited Anthropocene last week, I found no such sense of immediacy. Even before going to the exhibition, I scanned the information page on the AGO’s website, and found the tone to be quite off-putting - not a single mention of a pressing issue (not even a single use of the words climate change!), but rather a number of vague sentences about the traces and “signatures” that we have left upon the planet. I was honestly sad at the lack of urgency displayed. The page even includes a statement from the artists, which is also featured next to the introductory panel for the exhibition. This statement reads: “Our ambition is for the work to be revelatory, not accusatory, as we examine human influence on the Earth both on a planetary scale and in geological time. The shifting of consciousness is the beginning of change.” Something that I have learned recently is that in writing, silence can be more important than anything else.

Detail of a photograph by Edward Burtynsky showing a Phosphor Tailings Pond in Florida,

Photo Courtesy of Jordan Fee

What they are not saying in this statement is what we are all not saying: that climate change is our fault, that it is happening right now, and that it will soon begin to affect our daily lives. The words climate change appear only once in the entire exhibition; a small boost in comparison to the museum's website. In addition to that, the language used in many of the descriptive panels lends itself even further to this vague interpretation of our effects on the world as being “powerful” and “poetic”, thus extending this strange artistic metaphor for the negative effects that industrial processes have wrought upon the Earth. It is true that some text within the exhibition does speak to the feeling of worry that some of the photographs and films evoke; thus the gravity of our current situation is acknowledged. But is this really useful commentary? Of course we are worried; but do we actually acknowledge these worries in a way that is even remotely constructive? Do we actually talk about climate change?

In 2014, writer and activist George Marshall published a book titled Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. This book provides a fascinating perspective on the topic of climate silence, documenting the ways in which people respond to questions about climate change. Marshall travels to towns affected by extreme weather events to speak with victims, to conservative Texas to speak with gun-toting tea-party voters, and even to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History - there is an entire chapter about how museums teach (or rather, fail to teach) about climate change. In all of these places, and in the many others discussed in his book, Marshall finds one commonality - a lack of desire to address these issues in a direct, meaningful manner.

A panel text written by filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, Photo courtesy of Jordan Fee

I understand the artists’ desire to not be accusatory. Most museum visitors do not want to be accused of destroying the planet after paying for admission. But how is it that an exhibition such as Anthropocene, which according to the introductory panel text is based directly on scientific evidence, says so little about the realities of climate change? If the artists involved really wanted to begin a shift in our consciousness surrounding these issues, perhaps they should have chosen a more direct path.