After Nature

Smoke. Dirt. Burnt offerings. I went to the “After Nature” exhibit at the the New Museumin NYC this weekend. As the brochure states, the exhibit “surveys a landscape similarly darkened by uncertain catastrophe.”

“After Nature” had all the trappings of contemporary art: glossy, conceptual, extreme with a smattering of skin for titillation. And as usual for a contemporary art show, it seemed kind of thrown together, trying hard to make more of a statement than truly focusing on a vision.

This art exhibit made me think about some recent ads and communications pieces I have seen. When I think of those ads, it's obvious to me communications and green marketing need to move from an inconvenient truth approach (guilt-driven and negative) and more about the convenient truth about possibilities and options. You can't corner people with visions of apocalypse and then leave them with very few options that they can pursue, etc.

I asked myself: Is this the best we can do to create a visual language that motivates and challenges people to do or be something different in regard to their impact on the environment? By scaring people. Shaming. Or as one artist’s work was described “by recuperating ancient sculpture techniques using animal intestines, straw, and other natural materials, Althamer creates puppets and deities that could be interpreted as effigies built to preserve the image of a race on the brink of annihilation.”

To be frank, we need a lot less “neo-primitive vocabulary” and much more focus on the truly motivational – and shared – visual language of what is possible in regard to our world and environment going into the future. We need people to reconnect with nature, not get over it.

How can we inspire people? Let me respond with three words:

Light. Beauty. Essence.

With our Project Images, that’s what we are trying to achieve. Not green washing or a corporate brand image, but paying artists to imagine, without a lot of direction or rules, what a more sustainable, simpler, and yes, cleaner world may be like.

As we have found, there are possibilities for magic in art and creation.