DeGrowth the Artworld
What "degrowth" would mean for the artworld
The artworld has failed at changing the world. It infrastructure accelerates capitalism and contributes to climate change. Other than discursively and thematically, climate change has not been taking seriously within the artworld.
Oil baron’s, mining corporations, and fossil fuel industry heavy invests in the arts in order to greenwash their image. These corporations do not see the artworld as a threat to their bottom line.
Degrowth, a proposal to how the global north can shift reliance on extractive energy intensive resources, would have profounds implications for the artworld.
What is degrowth?
Degrowth is, according to Jason Hickle, one of the main theorists behind the movement: ”A planned reduction of excess energy and resource use in rich countries to bring the economy back into balance with the living world, while reducing inequality and improving peoples access to resources they need to live long, healthy and flourishing lives”
Another description is: a policy of reducing levels of production and consumption within an economy in order to conserve natural resources and minimize environmental damage.
In other words, Degrowth radically challenges societies fetichization of economic growth and rejects the GDP as a measure of progress. Degrowth would instead prioritize an eco-centric economy with different parameters and protocols to shift away from extractive and wasteful industries.
Degrowth not only invites us to radically changing how we plan, build, distribute, manage economies, but also to change our how perspective on live and relationship with the earth.
DEGROWTH AND THE ARTWORLD
The artworld is not sustainable.
The artworld is a playground for the rich. It is an unregulated economy, which favors nepotism, corruption, money laundering and extravagant consumption. Capitalists celebrate the artworld and see the selling of works of art for millions of dollars as the sign of a healthy economy. The artworld also promises to create new millionaires economies.
Even though the art market, in the grand scheme is relatively small: it was a $65 Billion economy in 2023, it is a part of a global capitalist machine that is destroying the world. The artworld has not seriously tried to change its internal mechanism, instead it has decided to (through NFT’s, AI, and the demand for new markets) accelerate climate catastrophe.
The artworld measures progress and health based on how big its own market is. It celebrated the selling of art at exorbitant prices. Growth is central for how the artworld thinks of itself.
An Artworld based on green-capitalism will continue to rapidly grow under the justification that its internal practices are “sustainable” and “green”.
Under capitalism, we don’t need more museums with solar panels, we need a whole new social and economic structures under which museums can thrive as they are integral part of social wellbeing.
The artworld would need to drastically change if it wants to lead the way and adopt degrowth policies.
Here are some proposals:
1. Shift in Artistic Themes
Most art needs to focus on sustainability and climate change. Art can be used to raise consciousness on the planetary ecological collapse. There is no use of a museum of the museum is caught in a wildfire, if the museum is underwater, or if its too hot to go outside.
Most art needs to challenge capitalism. Normalize anti-capitalist proposals and tackle consumerism and wastefulness.
Ridicule artists that are wasteful.
We need more than just artwork that raises consciousness, we need artwork that proposes and builds alternatives.
2. Materials and Practices
Artists need to use sustainable and local materials. Avoid using Amazon. Shop local and change your practice in a way to minimize your ecological footprint.
Think about the amount of energy you are consuming to create your art. Experiment in new fronteers that are more sustainable.
Build a new local economy for artists. Like “farm-to-table” in the food industry. We need an economy that is “locally grown”.
3. Reevaluating Value and Commodification
Regulate the artworld. Cut loopholes, Target corruption.
Tax the artworld. Tax the millionaires that collect art. Tax work in freeports. Abolish freeports.
Every artwork sold can have an environmental tax that is used to fund local environmental efforts.
We need to change how museums and galleries measure progress and growth.
We need new institutions that regulate and hold museums and galleries accountable, in a way to meet zero emissions.
4. Decentralized Systems
Local Art Ecosystems: A degrowth framework may emphasize local communities, fostering decentralized art networks over globalized markets.
We will need to de-incentivize international fairs and biennials that encourage people to move from all over the world in private planes and yachts, into one location. (For example, Miami, Venice)
Collaborative Models: Collective art-making and shared ownership might grow as viable alternatives to individualistic approaches.
5. Redefining Institutions
Every museum and gallery needs to be sustainable and should cause zero-emissions. We need to think beyond solar panels, and more into a holistic system that integrates the artworld into a whole sustainable infrastructure.
Smaller, Flexible Spaces: Large, resource-intensive galleries and museums may be replaced or supplemented by smaller, community-focused venues.
Reduced Spectacle: Blockbuster exhibitions might give way to intimate, participatory, or process-oriented shows.
Every museum can have a sustanable community garden that helps combat food deserts.
Downscaling: means decentralization, it means reducing energy, it mean installing less exhibitions and instead working on deepeing relationships with the community.
6. Audience Engagement
The artwork can offer a space for activists and environmentalist to meet and propose radical solutions to the planetary crisis. It can become a democratic space space that invites public participations and experimentation.
Museums can shift their programing to specific critique multinational corporations that are destroying the earth.
7. Research
Invest in research that demonstrated the impact that the artworld has on the environment. We need prioritize research that explains specifically how the artworld is intertwined with capitalism and with climate change. This research would not only focus on museums, but on the entire network of production, distribution and reception of art.
This research would also focus on the top 1% of the wealthiest artists, collections, curators, museum directors and follow their consumption habits.
8. Change in mentality
We need to change what it means to be an “artist”, we need to change what “art” “is”. We need to re-imagine a social world that is not dependent on capitalism of fossil fuels. We need to change what kind of “ambitions” artist have.
We need to make art a collaborative practice, rather than an individualistic pursuit based on endless competition and personal expansion.
Challenges:
But let’s be real, our art-overlords will never loosen the grip they have over the artworld. These art-overlords will benefit and increase their wealth through climate change. They will benefit from investing in liberal-superficial-feelgood environmentalism, where nothing really changes.
Degrowth offers both opportunities and challenges for the art world. It invites a radical rethinking of creativity and production, potentially transforming art into a more communal, sustainable, and impactful practice.
CONCLUSIONS
Through the artworld, capitalism promises a life of luxury, wealth and status. We will need to change what art means in order to even remotely try to save the planet.
More profoundly, the artworld investment in capitalism is actively destroying other artworlds in the global south, and actively preventing the emergence of alternatives. As long as the artworld is invested in capitalism, we are forced down a path where art becomes irrelevant, redundant, apolitical, sanitized, boring and only enjoyed as commodities and toys by the top 1% of the elite.
There is no art on a dead planet. There is no art in a green capitalist hell.
Inspiration:
https://www.art-dus.de/leigh-biddlecome-sustainability-art-essay/
https://www.springerin.at/en/2022/3/degrowth-und-die-kunst/