This lecture will offer a review of work that deals with problems such as desertification, air pollution or climate change. And of those that imagine a more responsible relationship with nature and other human beings.
"What is art's role in the environmental crisis? First, Art can make visible some hidden relations or ignored problems, also, art can make us sensitive to abstract data. Secondly, when creating a certain type of site specific work, art helps to remediate or transform particular damage. As the consequences of Climate Change (that has already begun) will deeply transform society, art can help to change people’s values and desires to live satisfactorily in a post carbon future. Obviously, these new themes and challenges will need new types of art, in which collaboration with science and activism will play an important role."
About the artist:
José María Parreño Velasco is Professor of History of Contemporary Art in the School of Fine Arts (Universidad Complutense, Madrid). Member of the funded research project: 'Environmental humanities, strategies for ecological empathy and the transition towards sustainable societies'. Director of the research group, Climatology of the Planet and the Conscience. Guest editor for the 2015 Spring special issue of the on-line journal ECOZON@ titled, Artistic Ways of Understanding and Interacting with Nature. Texts in the exhibition’s catalogues of artists who work in or with Nature, such as Andy Goldsworthy, Adolfo Schlosser, Eva Lootz or Fernando Casás. Curator of exhibitions including: Spanish sculpture of avant-garde in wood (2000) ; Naturally Artificial. Spanish Art and Nature 1968-2006; and Lands in Trance - the work of Lucía Loren (2016). Contributor to the book Art and Ecology (2015), edited with T. Raquejo.