What’s Next for Earth: Social Structure Art Call

Michele Guieu | June 3, 2021 | Leave a Comment

You are invited to participate in @WhatsNextForEarth’s art call “Social Structure” open until June 30th, 2021. What’s Next for Earth is a participative art project based on Instagram that invites the community to respond to a monthly topic, reflecting on the human predicament. A selection of the contributions is published on the MAHB Arts Community Page

Since April 2020, What’s Next for Earth proposed 14 art calls including this one. More than 120 artists participated worldwide. 

The Art Call

In 2021, What’s Next for Earth proposes to go through The Post Carbon Institute’s FREE online course THINK RESILIENCE, one lesson at a time. Please sign up at education.resilience.org (it’s easy!).– Each lesson is short and gives an excellent overview of the topic.

There are also many articles available on this website, about social structure / Systems of political and Economic Management. For example Nate Hagens’ article “Earth VS the Amoeba”.

Think Resilience / Please watch:
– the introductory video (lesson 1)
CHAPTER ONE – Our converging Crisis
– Energy, (lesson 2)
– Population and Consumption (lesson 3).
– Depletion (lesson 4)
– Pollution (Lesson 5)
CHAPTER TWO – The Roots and Results of Our Crises
Political & Economic Management (Social Structure) (lesson 6)

“Every society has institutions for making decisions and allocating resources. Some anthropologists call this the structure of society. Every society also has an infrastructure, which is its means of obtaining food, energy, and materials. Finally, every society also has a superstructure, which consists of the beliefs and rituals that supply the society with a sense of meaning. In this lesson we see how our current systems of political and economic management—our social structure—evolved to fit with our fossil-fueled infrastructure, and we’ll very briefly explore what a shift to different energy sources might mean for the politics and economics of future societies.”

PLEASE READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO HERE if you do not get the chance to watch the video.

Think Resilience Course

"Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury."

Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.

We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do?

Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have good start on two important skills:

1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.

2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.

How to participate in the Art Call

1. Create your piece using any format/technique you wish. 

2. Post it on your Instagram page. Include a description of your piece in your photo’s caption: title, technique, and size, the relationship with the theme. 

Copy and paste all these tags at the end of your description:

#socialstructure #artcall
@WhatsNextForEarth
@mahbglobal
@postcarboninstitute
#extractionart
#mahbstanfordarts
#WhatsNextForEarth
#ecoart
#artactivism
#humanpredicament
#mahbartscommunity
#anthropocene
#climateemergency
#climatechange

Follow What’s Next for Earth on Instagram!

What’s Next for Earth is a project created in April 2020 by Michele Guieu, ecoartist, art educator, and MAHB Arts Community Coordinator. If you have any questions about the project or this art call, please send a message to michele@mahbonline.org

The views and opinions expressed through the MAHB Website are those of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the MAHB. The MAHB aims to share a range of perspectives and welcomes the discussions that they prompt.