Utopian Scenario about Nature

Artists: Kang Sindae, Kang Hong-goo, Kim Hyoyeon, Nazgol Ansarinia, Dan Perjovschi, Dan Peterman, Listen to the City, Munem Wasif, Park Jahyun, Bang Jeong-A, Bad New Days, Song Hojun, Arahmaiani, Ai Weiwei, Allan Sekula, Yoko Ono, Image Research Community Banzzak, Lee Jinjoon, INTERPRT, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Jeong Chulkyo, Joana Moll, Joo Jaehwan, Kim Simonsson, Topological Atlas, Fiona Banner AKA The Vanity Press, Hwang Jaihyoung, Haroon Mirza, Hans Haacke

The present era is commonly referred to as the era of climate crisis. In this context, how is the climate crisis presented and perceived? If we reflect on how such things are visualized, climate issues are perceived in the realm of subjective sensory experiences such as weather or natural phenomena, or symbolically through scientific indicators converted into measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperature changes. This indicates that no one, regardless of their expertise, has been able to capture adequately a sense of the true immensity of a future global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees.

A crucial point regarding this notion that the climate crisis has not, as yet, been properly represented lies in its implication of the incompetence of art and that the artistic imagination of our time likewise faces a crisis. Several organizations have been established around the United Kingdom, charged with attempting to apply environmental policies for carbon neutrality. Despite these efforts, debate on sustainability within the art museum has failed to contribute to changes in public perception, their political attitude instead drawing criticism, with museums accused of having become products of the spectacle and complicit in the chaos caused by the climate crisis. However, this failure of representation has become an extremely favorable condition enabling contemporary capitalism to produce new commodity values. This can easily be discerned by paying attention to how the climate crisis is represented in the media today.

These changes in modes of capitalism, promoting environmentally friendly policies across politics, economics, society, and culture, and a reorganization driven by the aestheticization of nature, Utopian Scenario about Nature was conceived to question what “eco-friendly” really should mean and to find answers in contemporary art. The exhibition aims to examine ecological and political attitudes and their development in the trends of socially critical and participatory art which emerged in the 1960s and continue to the present. The 1960s marked the beginning of large-scale economic development focused on increasing productivity and was also a period during which branches of economics such as ecological economics and resource economics began to grow, with nature becoming incorporated into market logic. This led to increasing concerns about the unlimited material growth of capitalism and sparked active discourse about environmental problems arising from the relationship between capital and nature. These developments had a significant impact on the art-world of the era. On one hand, although the term “eco-art” had not yet been established, there emerged a trend of directly incorporating natural elements and the natural environment itself as subjects and materials in art. On the other hand, radical realpolitik rose to prominence and the social functions and roles of art were enhanced.

However, this exhibition is not to summarize the historical lineage of ecological art. Representing the era of climate crisis entails visualizing a restructured form of nature within capitalist history. The artworks in this exhibition offer a critical exploration of today’s ecological capitalism, both in their attempt to represent socialized and historicized nature and also in going beyond the normal narrow material dimensions of visualization in exhibitions and advocating for forms of social practice. Whilst the former conjures images of obscure capital flowing from plantations, mines, oil wells, and the deep sea, the latter directly engages with life, involving workers, refugees, volunteers, social activists, policy researchers, and so on. This exhibition represents a step towards establishing genuinely “eco-friendly museums” that will produce historically, politically, and socially significant and effective ecological art; something which will require comprehensive systemic transformation like never before.