Tag Archives: climate change

The Truth Will Set You Free

At the end of 2017, one year into the Trump presidency, the familiar begins to escape us.

The Autocrat's Language

"Using words to lie destroys language. Using words to cover up lies, however subtly, destroys language. Validating incomprehensible drivel with polite reaction also destroys language. This isn’t merely a question of the prestige of the writing art or the credibility of the journalistic trade: it is about the basic survival of the public sphere.

In Russia, first they came for the words of politics, value, and passion. Then they came for the words of action, the words that describe buildings, the numbers that denote dates. And then there were no words left to speak. Not that this is a Russian phenomenon.

Here is what Confucius had to say on the topic:

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything."

-- Masha Gessen, The Autocrat's Language, NYRDaily

RSS What Donald Trump Says

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Live Stream January 20, 2018

TRUTH BE TOLD – unveiled at 3 PM, January 20, 2018, first anniversary of the Trump inauguration, at Jim Kempner Fine Art 501 West 23 Street, NY, NY, streaming live until it’s gone.

This is the sixth in a series we’ve done since 2006. The temporary monuments of Melted Away are markers for the opening decades of the 21st century – first, DEMOCRACY is broken, then, the ECONOMY ruined; the MIDDLE CLASS disappears, THE FUTURE is tenuous, THE AMERICAN DREAM vanishes, and TRUTH remains an open question.

Site is visible from the street at all times, 24/7. We will be streaming LIVE for the duration, at meltedaway.com, on Facebook Live and on a network of galleries in North America. (Participating venues listed below.) Comments welcome – on Twitter @melted_away, Instagram @meltedaway, and on the Facebook Live feed.

The work will last for days, one week, possibly longer, in an almost imperceptible disintegration that belies the force and speed at which the current administration is attempting to undermine the basic concepts of our nation’s history and governance.

Jim Kempner Fine Art is located at 501 West 23 Street, corner of 10 Avenue and 23 Street.

Thanks to net neutrality the entirety of TRUTH BE TOLD is streaming at these galleries, universities, institutions and museums:

  • ArtsEverywhere
  • Catharine Clark Gallery
  • Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
  • Eyebeam
  • Harbourfront Centre
  • Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Digital Art/New Media MFA Program of UC Santa Cruz Arts Division
  • Nevada Museum of Art
  • San Francisco Art Institute
  • San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
  • Streaming Museum
  • Division of Media Arts + Practice, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
  • University of Texas at Austin Department of Art
  • Washington University, St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
On Location with Streaming Partners

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That Ever Elusive Future

Chantal Bilodeau

The Future

I have read dozens of reports and articles about climate change, and heard at least as many scientists talk. I can confidently say that I understand the basic science and that I am aware of the potential consequences of our actions. Yet that understanding hits me most profoundly when I am confronted with a piece of art that helps me not just understand but feel the impact of climate change.

I have been watching The Future melt for over two hours now, and every time a piece breaks off, a little piece of my heart breaks off with it. I have grown attached to this melting block of ice and feel, on a very small scale, the sense of loss that perhaps we are not allowing ourselves to feel on a much bigger scale. I am reminded that the future is both beautiful and fragile and that at a moment’s notice, it may fall apart. And I can’t help but think about the Buddhist teaching that says that we only ever have the present moment. The future never arrives. It is always out there, slightly out of reach. But its quality is forever determined by what we make of each moment.

By the end of the day, The Future  will be reduced to a puddle of melt water. But hundreds of people will have engaged with it: touched it, photographed it, talked about it, posted or tweeted about it. They may not remember or even know that we recently passed the 400 ppm threshold, or that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world. But they’ll remember the poetry of a melting block of ice. Perhaps they’ll even be touched by it and shape their next present moment in a way that protects that ever elusive future.

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Environmental Poetics

James Sherry

Ligorano and Reese’s art renders environmental risk as an immediate message that we all understand, THE FUTURE melting_away. But the practical solutions beyond art engage the primary cause of global warming, HUMAN DESIRE, that doesn’t melt. Desire continues.

We have the technology to arrest climate change. We have the political systems to transform society. But we lack the will to change. Art, poetry, music supply our will, the justification, if you will, to change. Environmental change engages human endeavor broadly: political change, social change, change in how we imagine ourselves in the world, economic change, new art, more realistic views of risk. The list is thorough. Our understanding is partial and filled with error. Error is why we cannot rely on a moral principle to arrest climate change. We must deal with each component and model it against a world art and poetry imagine. And at each step in imagining we compare what we have made to the model. Is it working, what are the consequences, whose interest is served, how can we distribute the risk?

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