MODES
Journal of Art History
Volume 7 | number 1
January - April 2023
ISSN: 2526-2963
Anthropocene Exhibitions in the Global South: dialogues between Art and Science
How to cite:
MELO, N. N. e. Anthropocene Exhibitions in the Global South: Dialogues Between
art and science. MODOS: Revista de História da Arte, Campinas, SP, v. 7,
n. 1, p. 260-285, jan.2023.
Abstract
What significance does the encounter with the Anthropocene have for art? We start from a set of 66 exhibitions to reflect on the role of museums and art in the construction of scientific literacy and understanding of the places occupied by humans in the planet. Although a greater expression in the number of exposures is found in the Europe and North America, we find in the South examples that stand out and allow that we focus on the different relationships that arise from the triangulation between the arts, sciences and political expressions. It is in this geographical scenario that we find new concepts, continuities and permanences, allowing countries like Brazil, Colombia and Taiwan at the forefront of an exhibition trend of the Anthropocene that will in addition to science and activism.
Keywords
History of Exhibitions. Museological Exhibitions. Anthropocene. Noosphere.
Introduction
The Anthropocene has become a conceptual tool of great importance influence on reflection on the intensity of global transformations that we have been witnessing in recent decades (Pádua, 2017). In the field exhibition, the Anthropocene emerges as an expansion of the thematic repertoire of the museums (Robin et al., 2014) and several exhibitions addressing the theme have been created all over the world from the second decade of the century XXI. The theme arouses the interest of academics and museums from various areas –from science and technology to arts and humanities.
By observing a set of 66 exhibitions, which took place between 2011 and 2018, and in which the term Anthropocene appears in the title, we find A much larger expression of art exhibitions: 52 out of 66, contrasting with ten scientific dissemination exhibitions and two defined exhibitions as transversal between art and science.
The set of exhibitions referred to is geographically distributed in 25 countries1, with the United States of America and France being the countries with the highest number of presentations on the theme (13 and 12, respectively). Half of the 66 exhibitions take place on the European continent. Robin et al. (2014) suggest that perhaps Europeans will give greater support to cultural institutions so that intervene in public and global policy issues.
Although most of the exhibitions are in America of the North and Europe, we find in the South examples that stand out and in the allow us to reflect on the different relationships that arise from triangulation between the arts, sciences and political expressions.
Brazil appears, after the United States and France, at the top of the countries with the most exposures. There were seven exhibitions on the Anthropocene, carried out between 2014 and 2017. Contrary to the trend found in both first countries, where there is a greater number of art exhibitions, in the In Brazil, five of the seven exhibitions were of a scientific nature.
If, on the one hand, the holding of the Conference of the Parties2 – COP 21 –in 2015 seems to have served as an ignition for further development of exhibitions around the world from 2014, on the other hand Brazil It faced, during this period, a political transition that stands out for a growing movement against science, both in the legislative sphere and in the in the social sphere. Over the last decade, and especially from the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2013, Brazil witnessed a increase in openly extremist and anti-democratic discourses, which ended up culminating in the election of a far-right government, whose practices are based on the propagation of fallacious information and narratives anti-scientific.
In addition, the largest social movements in Latin America are linked to environmental issues and opposition to the commodification of nature supported by right-wing or even moderate-left governments (Fernandes, 2020) and Brazil has a strong tradition of socio-environmental resistance that remains active despite the current political climate (Acker and Fischer, 2018). A context like this, giving voice to scientific discourses could be seen as an act of rebellion and contestation of current policies.
The Anthropocene exhibitions also emerge, in the context of the Latin American, in Mexico - two exhibitions, Argentina, Cuba and Colombia - one exhibition each. Unlike what happens in Brazil, in the other Latin American countries the exhibitions on the Anthropocene are all art exhibitions.
If, on the one hand, the political position of the countries in relation to the environmental issues seem to have an influence on both temporality and in the typology of exhibitions on the Anthropocene, the institutions that develop and host these exhibitions are also important actors to understand the phenomenon. In the scenario we are facing,Museums represent only a third of the institutions responsible for the development of exhibitions on the Anthropocene. We present in this article three expository scenarios of the Anthropocene, from which we propose reflect on the role of museum institutions in the participation in social debates and transmission of emerging scientific knowledge and the contribution of art in the construction of scientific literacy.
If the human context is precisely what allows art to share meanings and transforming values, what meaning does the encounter have for art with the Anthropocene? And what does it mean for the understanding and evolution of an initially scientific term to have encounters with the arts? For science, the What can these meetings mean?
Between the Anthropocene and the Noosphere
In 2017, the artist Jeannette Betancourt presented at the Museo de Arte de la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, in Mexico, the exhibition La Tierra: entre el Antropocene y la Noosfera. The exhibition is the result of the investigative process of the artist, who has dedicated herself to work on the representation of nature and the obstacles to its preservation, resulting from human activities and their sphere of knowledge:
The project "Effects of the Anthropocene and the Noosphere on Earth" addresses specifically topics such as migration, biodiversity crisis, weather as a measure of power, climate change and the impact of the economy and the technology in the human sphere, among other topics.3 (Betancourt, 2018)
The idea of a self-aware Anthropocene fits in the concept of noosphere, a geological space in which humanity, considered as a whole, it becomes a geological force moved by the power of a collective consciousness and intelligence. From the perspective of the noosphere, The transforming power of humanity is seen not as originating in the "living mass" that human beings represent, in terms of quantity of matter present in the biosphere, "but from your brain. If man understands this and does not use his brain and his work for self-destruction, an immense future opens up before him in the geological history of the biosphere" (Vernadsky, 1945)4. The noosphere appears, in exhibitions, as a concept associated with artists' reflections on the Anthropocene, the impact of Human Activities on Earth and the Role of Knowledge in This Age Humans.
The concept of noosphere arises from the collaboration between the French philosopher Edouard LeRoy and geologist and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, and was introduced by Le Roy in 1927, as part of his seminars at the Collège de France, as a new stage through which the biosphere would be passing, in geological terms. The notion of the noosphere originates from the ideas of Vladimir Vernadsky, Soviet mineralogist and geochemist, on the ability to action of the biosphere on the geosphere. Later, the concept was developed by Vernadsky in the article The Biosphere and the Noosfere, published in American Scientist in 1945. Vernadsky refers to the noosphere as a new phenomenon geological in which
(…) For the first time, man becomes a geological force in great scale. He can and must rebuild the province of his life with his work
and thought, to radically reconstruct it in comparison with the past. Ever wider creative possibilities open up before him. Can be that
our grandchildren's generation approaches its flowering.5 (Vernadsky, 1945)
At the heart of the noosphere is the human ability to alter the planet, based on collective intelligence and conscience. It is the development human intellectual who, seen as a whole, becomes a geological force.As with many of the narratives about the Anthropocene, the way in which Vernadsky presents the noosphere as an era of impacts human beings on Earth. But, just like the narratives of the Anthropocene, the idea of the noosphere is also presented with an opening of hope. The same collective intelligence that has the ability to destroy, has the opportunity to create, correct and improve, transforming in a positive way its presence and impact on the biosphere.
The exhibition La Tierra: entre el Antropoceno y la Noosfera, by the artist Jeannette Betancourt6, was composed of six works that sought to convey a clear vision of man's thought and his relationship with his surroundings economic, social and nature"7. The artist's vision, as well as that of Vernadsky, seems to be mostly pessimistic:
The perception of a world as a source of resources, and not as a habitat that we share with other species, has robbed planet Earth of its health and capacity for renewal. We participated in the moment of greatest progress of the knowledge and technology at the same time that our greater intellectual disability.8 (Betancourt apud Shernandezg, 2017)
In the exhibition, Jeannette Betancourt presents works with appeal to emotional and aesthetics, which make up a reflective exhibition in which there are relations of tension between human processes and the natural world. In the installation Waste, printed photographs of trees and forests were crumpled as if destined for the garbage. The Pieces of Broken Nature they are composed of metal spheres from which wooden branches emerge, in a composition that recalls fundamental shapes of the universe, such as atoms and cells. The course of currency and The logic of acceleration invite you to reflect on the culture of mass production and consumption that characterize the Anthropocene.
We can question, when we think about the weight of the production economy and consumption, the very space in which the exhibition takes place and the role of the economic value that the works of art represent for the Ministry of Finance Public Credit, being a significant part of the collection formed by the payment of taxes by Mexican artists through the direct delivery of their works9. Even so, contemporary art finds space recurrent in the museum's temporary exhibitions, and the works on display by Jeannette Betancourt at the Museo de Arte allows us to question capitalist and anti-environmentalist culture by opening space to look at the Anthropocene from a human collective consciousness, noosphere, in the which technosphere and biosphere lie at opposite poles.
Also in 2017, the Emmerico Nunes Cultural Center and the Arts of Sines, in Portugal, hosted the exhibition Estação Vernadsky, resulting from an artistic residency based on Vladmir's thought Vernadsky and, more specifically, in the concept of noosphere. And in 2018, the exhibition Eco-visionaries: art and architecture in the Anthropocene, from the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, included a work on the same concept.
In all three cases, the noosphere stands out as a defined temporal space by the collective intelligence of humanity. It is "the place of thought and intelligence, the world of ideas and universal consciousness"10 (Betencourt apud Shernandezg, 2017), "a time when the collective intelligence of the human beings would change the surface of the earth"11 (Ohlenschlager, 2018), a reality in which living matter acts upon inert matter to shape it and alter it, to the point that technology is "an extension of life, something "natural", therefore, and not "artificial"" (Câmara Municipal de Sines, n.d.).
Although most exhibits on the Anthropocene have place in Europe, exhibitions such as La Tierra: entre el Antropoceno y la Noosphera allow us to reflect on other contexts of discourse on the Anthropocene. In the same sense, examples of continuity and permanence are found outside the Northern axis, with exhibitions on the Anthropocene that contest current contexts from museums. The art biennials, especially those that arise outside the European axis, demand attention to decentralizing movements.
Taipei Biennial: the Anthropocene is (not) of the West
Historically, the format of biennials can be related to that of Fairs World Cups, showcases of the colonial and industrial nations of the nineteenth century and of a globally dominant Western culture. However, even if the Fairs World Cup can be considered precursors of the biennial format, these have changed to a format that distances itself from exhibitionism of the colonial nations of the West, contributing to decentralization on the global stage (Marchart, 2014).
Although the first biennials maintained a focused approach in European modernity, it is possible to trace its decentralization, and increasing participation of non-Western nations, from the 1990s onwards. 1950, with the foundation of the São Paulo Biennial (Marchart, 2014). In Asia, the Biennials began to take place from the 1980s onwards and in the emergence of the 21st century: new biennials in the Asia-Pacific axis demand attention from of three main motivations: cultural emancipation, development and, less often, the political legitimacy of a nation or an emerging state (Gardner; Green, 2016). The Taipei Biennale, which had started in 1992 and adopted its current format from 1998, is an example of is an example of a biennial that inevitably became part of the political normalization of a contested nation (Ibidem).
In authoritarian countries such as China, the holding of these biennials depends on state authorizations in several of its stages, visa funding for artists and curators. Bureaucracy attests the dichotomy between the official interest in promoting biennials, in as to attract global attention, but to do so on the terms defined by the State (Ibidem). A biennial is therefore both an exhibition and a project rooted in a specific cultural context (Bourriaud, 2014). Nevertheless in the history of biennials, the so-called peripheries have often anticipated developments that would later be of great significance for the West (Marchart, 2014). The Taipei Biennale allows Taiwan to overtake the isolation in which the country's diplomatic situation confined it, through the participation of internationally recognized names in the arts and integrating the country into a global network of curators, critics, artists and museums12.
In 2014, starting from the idea of tribute to the co-activity between human beings, humans and animals, plants and objects, the Taipei Biennale (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2014) promoted as its central theme The great acceleration - art in the Anthropocene, curated by Frenchman Nicolas Bourriaud. The involvement of the French curator seems to open spaces of existence for the Taipei Biennale, which gained prominence in several foreign magazines, and through invitations made to Nicolas Bourriaud to talk about the exhibition throughout Asia and Europe (Marcout, 2014). In addition to the media prominence apparently given to Bourriaud, the representativeness of artists at the Biennial deserves some considerations.
Taiwan had, in absolute number per country, the largest number of artists represented in The great acceleration - art in the Anthropocene. There were ten Taiwanese artists present at the biennial, followed by nine from the United States United States of America, six from the United Kingdom and five from France. However, a closer look at the exhibition panorama shows us that most of the of the artists and collectives present (34) are from Europe, the USA and Japan13.
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The media prominence given to the curator of the biennial brings with it the French dominance on the global stage of exhibitions on the Anthropocene. France is not only one of the countries with the highest number of exhibitions on the Anthropocene, carried out over the last decade in the country, but apparently also exporting his vision, through the work of researchers, philosophers and curators.
For Bourriaud, the concept of the Anthropocene, as it was geological characterized by the alteration of the structure of the planet by the species, points to a paradox: "the more powerful and real the impact the less contemporary individuals feel capable of to influence the reality that surrounds them"14 (Bourriaud, 2014). This place of spectator and victim before their own creations, would take the elements human and non-human to a political coalition in which human beings cohabit with animals, data, phenomena such as the rapid growth of plants and temporal spaces as the slowness of the movements of matter (Ibidem). It is from this space of cohabitation that The great acceleration - art in the Anthropocene "presents a world before human consciousness, mineral landscapes, plant transplants or couplings between humans, machines and animals"15 (Ibidem).
Technological creations seem to remove the human from a place of superiority, demonstrating its inability to subjugate all the elements with which he lives: "The human being is only one element among others in a broad network, for which we need to rethink and renegotiate our relational universe and reconsider the role of art in this new landscape mental." 16 (Ibidem).
Artists would experience this technosphere as a second ecosystem, putting search engines and living cells, minerals and artwork into the same level of usefulness - "what matters most to them is no longer the things, but the circuits that distribute and connect them"17 (Ibidem).
The exhibition is based on the relationships and connections between humans and of these with non-human elements, art being a tool, or activity, which looks at these connections. Reflections on the Anthropocene and the variables that make up the contexts of this human era appear from of the different artistic expressions found in the biennial.
The installation Golden Ghost, by Taiwanese artist Surasi Kusolwong, pushes to reflect on consumerism by stimulating the behavior of visitors of search for material goods. In a room whose floor was covered by a large and confusing layer of textile threads, originating from industrial waste, The artist invited visitors to search for 12 gold necklaces designed and produced by him18.
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With a similar basis for reflection, Production Line – Made in China & Made in Taiwan, by Po-Chih Huang, invites us to reflect on the relationship between economy, consumption and our perspective of the world, from the evolution of the Taiwan's economy, including the garment industry, counted through the professional trajectory of the artist's mother19.
In contrast to the idea of production and consumption, Brazilians from the collective OPAVIVARÁ! brought to the Taipei Biennale an invitation to inactivity. The Formosa Decelarator installation consists of an octagonal structure, made around which sixteen hammocks are hung and in the center of the which a table offers visitors-users a variety of herbs to make tea [Fig.1]. It is an installation that fosters relationships through indigenous traditions such as the use of healing herbs and hammocks20. With the Great Acceleration being one of the main stages of the Anthropocene, Formosa Decelator invites you to counter the race for production and productivity, allowing us moments of slowdown.
n a review of this edition of the Taipei Biennale, Ida Yang reflects about humanity's growing distance from itself and the nature, especially since the Industrial Revolution, and about the term Anthropocene as a designator of the end of anthropocentrism, using the title Anthropocene to coin "the human scene from which we can reflect on art in this era of great acceleration" (Yang, 2015).
Works of art as a human product can transcend the values of consumerism exchange and exist independently? Whether in the Anthropocene, or in the Anthropocene, we can use artistic creation to reconnect with nature and the planet? (Ibidem).
Like Yang, Nicola Bourriaud also questions the role that art can assume in a human age: "What is the true composition of the network of human interpersonal relationships? Can art be able to make the bridge between these relationships?" (Bourriaud, 2014).
To understand the role of art in the construction of a consciousness about the Anthropocene and the places occupied by the human, we cannot dissociate it from the scientific spaces from which the concept arises and in the which gain a place of exhibition permanence. Looking at this perspective of permanence becomes even more imperative when the first permanent exhibitions on the Anthropocene arise, contrary to the trend, to the South.
Brazil: permanent showcases of the Anthropocene
Permanent exhibitions in museums are the result of processes of knowledge construction (Dubald; Martinho, 2017), materializing not exclusively from the work of scientists, but from a group of actors that can also be formed by educators, designers, managers and architects, with each actor having a defined function (Paddon, 2014). The shape how the exhibitions are composed brings underlying the beliefs, the objectives and the narratives of the disciplinary, geographical and temporal environment in which they are inserted the museological institutions.
In the twenty-first century, permanent museum exhibitions have been updated to meet the expectations of the public, especially in museums that are housed in buildings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, challenged to seek new conceptions that make their spaces suitable to the new century (Giannini; Bowen, 2019). This demand for an adaptation to the present time it is not always reflected in the exhibition contents. Many the historical narratives told by the permanent exhibitions in museums are not very open to incorporating research results most recent (Dubald; Martinho, 2017).
This limitation makes museums risk at least one of two scenarios: that their permanent exhibitions do not include them at all relevant scientific topics today and focus only on the results consolidated scientific studies in the past, or that by incorporating current themes quickly become obsolete, given the speed with which the research on these emerging topics.
The commitment to the communication of reliable information does not should prevent museums from communicating science more permanently
under construction. After all, the reliability of science is based precisely on a joint construction over time. The scientific path is changeable And this does not make it any less reliable. It is not the role of museums to prove, for example, example, the science of climate change, but promoting communication of the theme with its audiences (Cameron; Hodge; Salazar, 2013). The same principle can be applied to the Anthropocene, especially if we address the concept from a multidisciplinary point of view, taking to museums the ongoing debates in different disciplines and areas of knowledge.
Among the countries with the most exhibitions on the Anthropocene, Brazil is the third. The Brazilian scenario stands out for the existence of a greater number of scientific exposures when compared to the United States and France, the two countries with the highest number of exhibitions and being the majority of these art exhibitions. But the South American country also stands out for to be the only one, in the set presented here, in which it was possible to find permanent exhibitions on the Anthropocene. There are two: Anthropocene (Museum of Tomorrow, 2015) and Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene (Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará, 2016).
The Museum of Tomorrow was inaugurated in December 2015 in Rio of January and in its permanent exhibition, audiovisual resources have great highlight. The content production has three partners: Globo News; Deutsche Welle and Agence France-Press, all media news outlets with an international reach.
The Museum of Tomorrow defines itself as "a different science museum. An environment of ideas, explorations and questions about the time of great changes in which we live and the different paths that open up for the future" (Museum of Tomorrow, About the museum). It is not, therefore, a great It is surprising that the Anthropocene appears prominently on the main route of the museum, "both spatially, since it is right in the middle of the route, as in conceptual terms, as it discusses our condition and that of the planet" (Museum of Tomorrow, Anthropocene).
The exhibition is made up of six totems ten meters high that broadcast audiovisual content about the impact of humans on the planet and the extreme climate change for which we are responsible. The totems they also expose, within them, the processes and historical antecedents that
have brought humanity to this point and formed this new era.
As it is composed mainly of audiovisual content, it is given the nature of content partners, we might expect exposure permanent structure of the Museum of Tomorrow was changed or updated with some regularity. However, what we see is a more static exposure, as well as that of other museums, which ended up being changed in the segment of a new impact that shook human comforts: the pandemic of Covid-19. It is in 2020 that the main exhibition of the Museum of Tomorrow has your updated content. In the exhibition on the Anthropocene, the video Growth of Understanding, which until then told the story of the movements environmental issues from the 1940s until the Paris Agreement, now include information about the world with the Coronavirus pandemic (Museu do Tomorrow, updates...).
The pandemic led not only to an update in the contents of the exhibition, as it forced a review of the experience of the route. From after the reopening of the museum, the exhibition began to have a unique sense of visitation, defined without the possibility of return, to avoid crowds. In the scenario of the impacts caused by the Coronavirus pandemic on cultural sector, including museums, the responses and restrictions of the Museum of Tomorrow they will make it possible to keep the Anthropocene within the reach of the public. Also in Brazil, the Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará was forced to close in extended visits to his exhibitions21, including Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene.
The Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará presents, in the first place, as an institution dedicated to research and linked to the Ministry of Education, of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications of Brazil. Founded in 1866, its mission is "to carry out research, promote scientific innovation, train human resources, conserve collections and communicate knowledge in the areas of natural and human sciences related to the Amazon" (MPEG, Presentation).
The exhibition Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene appears in the museum as one of the INCT's science education and communication actions Biodiversity and Land Use in the Amazon, a research institute that it started its activity in 2009. Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene presents the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological era and invites visitors thinking about the future of the Amazon through videos, content climate change multimedia, life-size replicas from areas of the Amazon rainforest, taxidermed specimens of species extinct and interactive panels that include content such as species sounds disappeared from the region of Belém, the city in which the museum is located, and information on the scientific criteria for carrying out diagnoses of the state of biodiversity in the region (MPEG, Opening of the exhibition...).
At its inauguration, the exhibition presented, above all, problems that would lead to the invitation to reflect on how to achieve a future sustainable taking into account the changes caused by the human species in the environment. This question also guided a series of public events, from which a second phase of the exhibition would be set up, under the title Sustainability (2017). With themes ranging from the importance of the region as a center of endemism to changes to Amazonian systems caused by human actions, Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene also brings to the debate the actions perpetrated against local populations, presenting "in the last part of the exhibition, the attacks of loggers and illegal exploiters to the Ka'apor people of Maranhão", according to Uriel Pinho registered by the News Agency on the museum's website (Pinho, 2016).
This is not a neutral discourse.
If art often appears as a tool for activism and contestation in the context of the debates and communication on the amendments climate change and the Anthropocene, in Brazil the science-based exhibitions seem to have a greater expression. With the Anthropocene as a backdrop background, the two permanent exhibitions in Brazil can be considered an indicator of museum spaces as spaces of contestation.
The period of the first exhibitions on the Anthropocene in the country is marked by a political crisis characterized by anti-political extremism. and anti-scientific discourses, which often arise within the of the government and are amplified in a social context. The growing spread of fake news and information, which feed narratives opposite to those of the academic communities, gives rise to these spaces of contestation. Since the Brazil, a country recognized for its tradition of socio-environmental resistance (Acker; Fischer, 2018), the voice of museums could be, in the context exposed, an act of rebellion in relation to the discourses and policies on the rise, and the permanent exhibitions tools that allow you to extend the echo of this voice.
Although the Anthropocene is a subject of scientific genesis, it is fundamental to reflect on the role of art in this human period, the dialogues that science can develop with science and how these dialogues can contribute, in an exhibition context, to our understanding of places that we occupy on this planet, at this moment.
Final Thoughts: Art, Science, and Inspirations for the Future
As a cultural concept, the Anthropocene allows us to question narratives established (Trischler, 2016), an ability that we can also attribute to art, as an expression and tool for contestation, questioning and fostering reflections and emotions. If we consider it so, the combination of art with the concept of the Anthropocene has the potential to build spaces powerful reflections on the period in which we live and the role of the human being in the places he inhabits.
Art is not contained by the same limitations as science, in which responsibility for "truth" can become an anchor, even if the scientific truth is changeable and sometimes ephemeral. In the scientific field the value of the facts, the results of the investigations and review by peers, who construct truths, until further evidence to the contrary. The artist, on the other hand, it enjoys greater interpretative freedom, and provided that we are talking about democratic states, freedom of expression and opinion. The artist does not need a concept to be described and established by scientific advice to use, discuss, contest, shape and represent.
Art is fundamental not only to think, but to feel the Anthropocene. More than a scientific concept, the Anthropocene can be considered a sensory phenomenon linked to the experiences of living in a increasingly decadent world, and our perception of the concept is many sometimes linked to its visualization, through data, satellite images or climate models (Davis; Turpin 2015).
The Anthropocene, as a cultural, artistic and social concept, can help to make room for greater dialogue between different disciplines and to blur the division between the arts and sciences in the construction of knowledge.
In the museological context, so that the constructive and interventional role of art being possible in co-relation with other disciplines, we need to to build active relationships between museum audiences and art and science, as well as to recognize the roles that art can assume, beyond the aesthetic entertainment.
Perhaps because artists are the ones who occupy spaces of greater freedom, compared to the methodological processes that guide scientists,
exhibitions on the Anthropocene first appear as an artistic expression, although examples of character expositions quickly emerged scientific. The artistic exhibitions also have, in each country where they appear, a greater numerical expression, with the exception of Brazil, where exhibitions
of a scientific nature appear as contestatory in a social scenario and political based on anti-scientific movements and propagators of false information.
The Museum of Tomorrow, inaugurated in December 2015 in Rio de Janeiro, Janeiro-RJ, and the Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará, in Belém-PA, appear not only only from the forefront of the Anthropocene exhibition, but as institutions which give the theme long-lasting stages.
The first is defined as a space for questioning about the moment we live in, of great changes, and the exploration of ideas, especially regarding the possibilities for the future. From the Bay of Guanabara, the Museum of Tomorrow could serve as a space for reflection of various historical and social moments that characterize the Anthropocene. On the one hand, in the recovery of colonial memory and the construction of history of the present from the silent histories of the groups that have been historically disadvantaged, discriminated against and dominated. On the other hand taking on the environmental stories that start from Rio de Janeiro, where in 1992 saw the Earth Summit, which resulted in a Framework Convention of the United Nations on Climate Change.
So that the speeches of the Museum of Tomorrow can reflect all the past, present and future – and their different participations in the Anthropocene, it will be necessary to question the way in which these discourses are constructed and the actors behind their elaboration. The production of contents at the Museum of Tomorrow has three media partners, news outlets with international reach: Globo News (Brazil), Deutsche Welle (Germany) and Agence France-Press (France). We can't ignore, therefore, the presence of two of the largest European economies and we must question what these presences can mean in what they say in the construction of discourses in the Museum of Tomorrow and how the visions Anthropocene European Championships permeate, or not, its exhibition.
French representation in the context of exhibitions on the Anthropocene Goes Beyond the Presence of a Private News Agency, as is the case with Agence France-Press. France emerges as one of the countries with more exhibitions on the Anthropocene developed – only behind but it also seems to have influence in exhibitions that take place outside the national and European space, whether in financing and export of exhibitions, or in the dissemination of concepts (as is the case of the idea of noosphere, presented by the Frenchmen Edouard LeRoy and Teilhard de Chardin), but also in the direct influence of French curators in international exhibitions.
Three of the four case studies presented contain, in some form, with the presence of France. The fourth is, perhaps, the one whose context in which there is the exhibition on the Anthropocene we can consider the most disruptive and promoter of resistance to social and political characteristics current events, such as the exhibition Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene in the Museu Pareanse Emílio Goeldi.
If Brazilian exhibitions stand out for their scientific character, the exhibition at the Goeldi Museum is also presented as a space of resistance Ecological. Located in Belém, Pará, the museum is located in the discursively at the entrance to the Amazon. In the political context also characterized by ecological neglect and encouragement of the predatory extractivism of the Amazon rainforest, the exhibition Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene has the potential to be framed as tool of scientific and social resistance.
Nature, from the perspective of the West, is an entity separate from something that exists outside the limits of human civilization, which makes it difficult to our empathy with this entity that only exists at a distance. In the Anthropocene this division between "nature" and "culture" ceases to matter. In the era of humans, everything applies to them, and everything is connected to them (Kosewski, 2015).
While the concept of the Anthropocene has emerged in several disciplines and forms of exhibition representation, the noosphere presents itself between the philosophical field and the arts. When combined, the idea of the human while geological factor is reinforced. Our destructive power, while species, originates in our brain capacity. We have to look for the same origin to activate our (re)constructive power as a collective. It is not only technology that is, through the human, an extension of life. Culture and art are also.
While the human context allows art to share meanings and transform values, the encounters of the arts with the Anthropocene can help us reflect on our behaviors and relationships with (or against) nature, the planet and (other) humans. When embedding a theme of scientific genesis, the arts can contribute to its understanding by part of the museums' audiences, but also contribute to their evolution, since the dimensions of the Anthropocene have long since exceeded the geological debates, starting to encompass the different variables of what it means to becomes a human being.
Exhibitions such as The great acceleration - art in the Anthropocene (Taiwan, 2014), Anthropocene (Brazil, 2015-), Transformations: the Amazon and the Anthropocene (Brazil, 2016-) and La Tierra: entre el Antropoceno y la Noosfera (Mexico, 2017) allow us to take positions of social resistance and ecological in national and international contexts. However, they are anchored in disciplinary niches that are not very permeable between the arts and sciences. The climate crisis puts us in a place, and in a time, where only one of these dimensions is not enough. New knowledge is needed – science – and new representations – art (Malleray, 2015).
The present moment, in which the Anthropocene is expected to be at a entering a stage of consciousness, perhaps it is ideal for art to come together to different disciplinary areas and inspire us to find beauty in what is equally good for the planet22. Art would be a tool for, among others,
other functions, preserving our memories, feeding our optimism and assigning meaning to difficult experiences. Maybe they are just these are the qualities and strengths we need to go beyond a stage of awareness of the Anthropocene and move on to a stage of action against the our negative impacts on the planet.
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Notes:
* Institute of Contemporary History/Center for Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (IN2PAST
| IHC-CEHFCi - University of Évora). E-mail: nmelo@uevora.pt. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-
0001-7466-4772. This work is part of the research within the scope of the PhD in History and
Philosophy of Science - University of Évora, under the supervision of Maria de Fátima Nunes (University of Évora)
de Évora), Anabela Carvalho (University of Minho) and Pedro Casaleiro (University of Coimbra).
1 US:13; France: 12; Brazil: 7; Spain: 4; United Kingdom (England) and Australia: 3; Germany, Mexico,
Portugal, Switzerland and Canada: 2; Argentina, Taiwan, Poland, Belgium, Cuba, UAE, Denmark, Scotland,
Estonia, Slovakia, New Zealand, Colombia, Netherlands and Ireland: 1.
2 The Conference of the Parties (COP) is formed by the signatory countries of the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change, being the highest body of the latter.
3 "The project, "Effects of the Anthropocene and the noosphere on Earth"
specifically addresses issues such as migration, the biodiversity crisis, time as a measure of power,
climate change, and the impact of economics and technology on the human sphere, among others
topics". (Betancourt, 2018)
4 "But from its brain. If man understands this, and does not use his brain and
his work for self-destruction, an immense future is open before him in the geological history of the
biosphere." (Vernadsky, 1945).
5 For the first time man becomes a large-scale geological force. He can and
must rebuild the province of his life by his work and thought, rebuild it radically in comparison with
the past. Wider and wider creative possibilities open before him. It may be that the generation of our
grand children will approach their blossoming." (Vernadsky, 1945).
6 Although of Puerto Rican origin, where she studied Advertising, Journalism and Public Relations, Jeannette
Betancourt began her artistic career in Mexico, being naturalized Mexican.
7 From the original: "una clara visión del pensamiento del hombre y su relación con entorno
economic, social and naturalness."
8 "The perception of a world as a source of resources and not as a habitat
that we share with other species, there is stripped of the planet of its health and its capacity of
renewal. We participate in the moment of greater advancement of knowledge and technology to the
it is evident that there is a greater intellectual need." (Betancourt apud Shernandezg, 2017).
9 About the SHCP Art Museum, see the website, available at: https://sic.cultura.gob.mx/ficha.
php?table=museo&table_id=968. Accessed on: June 25, 2022.
10 "el lugar del pensamiento y la inteligencia, el mundo de las ideas y de la
universal consciousness" (Betencourt apud Shernandezg, 2017).
11 "An epoch in which human beings' collective intelligence would change the
surface of the earth" (Ohlenschlager, 2018).
12 Cf. interview by Jo Hsiao, Chief Curator of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for Laurence Marcout,
in Taiwan Info, of 11/01/2014. Available at: https://taiwaninfo.nat.gov.tw/news.
php?unit=63&post=66356. Accessed on: June 25, 2022
Of these 34, 24 are representatives of G7 countries (Group of Seven - intergovernmental political forum
consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of
America).
14 "the more powerful and real the collective impact of the species is, the less
contemporary individuals feel capable of influencing their surrounding reality" (Bourriaud, 2014).
15 Presents a world before human consciousness, mineral landscapes,
vegetable transplants or couplings between humans, machines and animals" (Ibidem).
16 "Human beings are only one element among others in a wide-area network,
which is why we need to rethink and renegotiate our relational universe and reconsider the role of art
in this new mental landscape." (Ibid.)
17 What matters most to them is no longer things, but the circuits that
distribute and connect them" (Ibidem).
18 About the work and presentation of the artist Surasi Kusolwong, see the TB 2014 website, available at:
https://www.taipeibiennial.org/2014/en/artists/54-surasi-kusolwong-en2c65.html. Accessed on: 25
Jun. 2022.
19 On the work and presentation of the artist Po-Chih Huang, see the TB 2014 website, available at:
https://www.taipeibiennial.org/2014/en/artists/46-po-chih-huang-en2c65.html. Accessed on: 25
Jun. 2022
20 About the work and presentation of the collective Opavivará!, see the TB 2014 website, available at:
https://www.taipeibiennial.org/2014/en/artists/78-opavivara-en2c65.html. Accessed on: 25 jun.
2022
21 The museum was closed for visitation for almost two years, having reopened only in December
of 2021.
22 Cf. exhibition Climat: bienvenue dans l'anthropocène. 23 Sep - 30 Dec 2015. Available at: https://www.
artcop21.com/fr/events/climat-bienvenue-dans-lanthropocene/. Accessed on: June 27, 2022. Although the
original link has ceased to function, the Internet Archive platform keeps records of it,
the last one being from 18 ago. 2022 and affordable in https://web.archive.org/web/20220818075953/https://
www.artcop21.com/fr/events/climat-bienvenue-dans-lanthropocene/. Accessed on 30 Jan. 2023.