What’s Next for Earth is a Community Art Project to reflect on the COVID19 period and re-invent the future: normal was the problem. Convergence is What's Next For Earth’s fourth project.
The inspiration for Convergence comes from an article posted on the MAHB, Dear MAHB Community:
[…] These stressors have now converged and the result is peaceful protests disrupted by opportunists, agitators, and failed leadership; the trigger for the convergence was the murder of a black citizen by the very people we pay to protect us and the failure of law-enforcement to respond quickly to those responsible. That was the trigger but not the cause. Just as all of the stressors have links to overpopulation and overconsumption by the wealthy, all of the stressors have links to systemic racism, sexism and oppression This is a MAHB moment—the stressors are interacting and manifesting their power in violence. It is time to come together and strengthen pro-social civil society’s influence—violence is not the enemy; violence is the symptom. […]
During the month of June 2020, artists on Instagram were invited to read “Dear MAHB Community” article, create an art piece, and post it on their Instagram page. A selection of the contributions was posted on What’s Next forEarth’s page. Here are some of them.
Pascal Ken (Saint-Brévin-L’Océan, Pays De La Loire, France)
Where are we going now ?
Digital photography 2020 (Morocco 2005, Japan 2009, Brittany France 2015)
15x15cm
Responsible citizens have knowledge about their role in their communities, their country, and their world. Responsible citizens participate in activities that make their world a better place. Responsible citizens are change agents that act out against social, economic, and environmental injustices
Eric Meyer (Paris, France)
Retrouver des couleurs, tisser les lignes.
Find colors, weave the lines.
Cyntia Fusillo (Barcelona, Spain)
Listen
“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” ~ Fannie Lou Hammer
Paper,coffee on paper, magnolia leaf, collage
65cmx65cm
Deborah Alastra (Portland, Oregon)
New Growth – 2020 ReGrowth
30×40”
Marcela Villaseñor
“The Mountain”
2020
Ivan Sigg (Paris France)
I photographed this rock at the southern tip of Shikoku (Japan). The ocean created these tender cells and then filled them with different quartz. There is not a bigger artist than nature! As the Taoist monk Shitao said in the 17th century “The painter’s activity is not to imitate the various facts of Creation, but to reproduce the very act by which nature creates”. To meditate in this human confused period.
Tree is calling me! Arbol esta llamando me!
Y Estoy pensando a mi hermano de la selva Amazonia.
Steven Dewitt (NYC, NY)
One of the 200+ photographs I’ve created of discarded gloves in East Harlem during the pandemic. More in the post Pandemic Pollution.
Marianne Bickett (Oregon)
“Convergence II”
Stars and distant nebula scatter across the back of my sister’s horse, Olive…
The ethereal and ephemeral converge
We are magic, you know, walking every day on sacred ground
How sad the lives wasted from ignorance and hate
When love is everywhere
mb ©️ 2020
Alise Sheehan (California)
A sign of the times. This sign is near a road cut off by a flooding creek. It seemed so fitting for our times. Here are some of the questions flooding my mind. Why does our world seem so cut off from sanity, and civility? Why is hatred such an easy bandwagon to jump on? Why do people stop thinking about what might be hurting others just to avoid having anything change?
Michele Guieu (Bay Area, California)
I shared the MAHB concerns about the human predicament: “the multiple cracks in our ecosystems, our fragile fantasy-based economic systems, our unjust agricultural and food systems, neglected public health systems, education systems too often consciously designed to reinforce ignorance, inequity, and greed—to name a few of the stressors.”
All these stressors are interacting. At the same time. Each stressor can worsen at any time and start an unpredictable chain reaction.
I realized the scope of our predicament two years ago and it definitely started a journey for me. Not an easy one: talking about the human predicament is complicated. People are either informed or not. If they are, and if they went over the grieving period, they are ready for action. If they are not, they usually do not wish to listen.
As an artist, I am looking for ways to address the complexity of the situation. How can I address this problem systemically, transversally, and not “in silo”?
How might I make people understand that it is not “just” about biodiversity loss, or resource depletion, or water scarcity, or possible wars?
It is our relationship with the living world that needs to be changed. The relationship between humans, the relationship with other species, the relationship with the land, the water, and the air.
We are not at the center.
Are we going to watch the convergence of all the stressors?
Or can we, humans, envision a convergence, move and work together towards “reducing the threat of a shattering collapse of civilization”?
~Michele Guieu, Eco-Artist, MAHB Member and MAHB Arts Community coordinator~