ArtReview 40

Mike Watson Living with the Maldives

If climate change has become an unprecedented
global challenge, our generations failing
may reside in its inability to provide a global
response. This difculty resides, in part, in
the fact that while the weather system is clearly
global, its traces and efects are only ever reg-
istered at the local level of nation or region.
In this sense, the cost of repairs and of future
disaster prevention in the wake of, say,
Hurricane Katrina, was no more an Italian or
Maldivian problem than the gradual sinking
of the Maldives islands or of Venice is of concern
to the United States. Yet if we concur with the
majority of the scientic community that global
warming is manmade it is arguable that
industrial countries should take responsibility
for the cost of, for example, sea defences and
relocation due to ooding. In this sense the
Maldives, which according to some projections
will be completely submerged by the end of
this century, are at the frontline of the urgent
quest for an adequate global response to climate
change though it is an argument with in-
creasing relevance to the UK, following recent
ooding due to storms across its coastlines.
In the context described above, the
Maldives Pavilion situated in Venice for
the 55th Biennale between May and November
2013 raised a number of questions, not
least due to its unusual genesis, coming about
during a period of regime change which
left the pavilion without ofcial backing,
and subsequently without a building, prior
to its last-minute relocation to Gervasuti
Foundation. The pavilion was placed rmly
at the nexus of several issues crucial to our
times; among them climate change, democracy,
global and national governance and, within
the context of the Biennale, the adequate
artistic response to these issues.
The Contingent Movements Symposium,
held at the Library of Historical Archives of
Contemporary Arts of the Venice Biennale on
the 28th and 29th of September 2013, included
interventions by, among others, Irit Rogof,
T. J. Demos, Mariyam Shiuna and Suvendrini
Perera on the themes of disappearance and
dispersal raised by the touted disappearance
of the archipelago nation of the Maldives.
Being an event held in parallel with the Maldives
Pavilion that included interventions from
some of its artists and curators, a tangible sense
of urgency was present. However, the linking
of the left to climate change via the arguable
connection between capital and harmful fuel
emissions, while possibly well founded, also
served to reinstate the left as a movement
waiting for deliverance from an intolerable
present to a utopian future, inscribing the
environment within a linear form of time
that is particular to human understanding.
The ostensibly pragmatic humanism of
third-way politics returns to an old-style
Marxist injunction to honour a future delivery
from barbarity (enslavement of the worker and
now the ecosphere) to utopia (freedom from
slavery and an ecosphere unfettered by
technological intervention).
What would arguably make more
sense would be to inscribe Marxism within
the ecosphere so that rather than climate
change being seen as an extension
of capitalist exploitation which
includes an anthropomorphised
nature, the exploitation of the
worker would be seen as one of
innumerable phenomena that
take place within the ecosphere.
This would tether our future
rmly to that of the ecosphere
without subjugating nonhuman
concerns to human ones. The only
problem then becomes that of why
we should care about the fate of the worker,
or indeed of nature at all. Once tethered to
nature red in tooth and claw, as Tennyson
famously wrote the ethical imperative to treat
others as we would wish to be treated becomes
lost. For aside from YouTube videos showing
dogs rescuing cats from near calamitous motor
incidents, we can see no overarching ethical
core in nature and no reason scientically to
suspect one at work under the surface.
How then might we reasonably append
the concerns of the left to nature, so that
the latters rescue would not be seen as a
pointless and egotistical human concern?
Finding an adequate response will require
work across the fields of ecology, philosophy
and politics. The artworld,
with its international
network of people and
spaces, may be the ideal
place to stage such a
discussion, as attested to by the presence of
the Maldives Pavilion at the last Biennale.
The Maldives, which according
to some projections will be
completely submerged by the
end of this century, are at the
frontline of the urgent quest
for an adequate global response
to climate change
Stefano Cagol, The Ice Monolith, 2013, installation
and video documentary. Photo: Alisia Cruciani.
Courtesy of Oredaria Gallery, Rome
An argument
implying that
there could be
noncapitalist
global warming,
which is no doubt
true, since there
is no such thing
as Communist
carbon dioxide.
Is the left now
subordinate to
ecologism?
AR-April-PoV.indd 40 13/03/2014 13:35