Global Warming: A Hyperobject
This is a massively distributed found art object that exists in a phase space whose dimensionality is too high for humans to see. And yet every day it will burn your skin, fall on your head and cause coral to die. This magical object lasts for 100 000 years. It covers the entire surface of Earth up to the height of the outer atmosphere, and includes photons from the Sun.
A response: These things are more of a post-visible sublime than a non-visible art. In the liberal atomic world everyone is destroyed (but us) by a force whose power is not a condition of its visibility but its scale. (You talk about scale - macro, micro etc a lot). And scale is a POV thing.
ReplyDeleteEither way, try telling a Trobriand Islander that sea-level rise is an artform. Or a blue-tailed lizard that global warming is a curatorial thematic.
Actually, I know you'd agree and that, in fact, this is not what you were talking about.Really.