Artists and the Environment
Kamusta sa inyong lahat (“Hello to you all,” in Tagalog).
In October 2021, I joined Emily Feinstein in leading an online weekend workshop on artists and the environment. Sixty-five RC leaders—from Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Canada, and the United States—attended.
I led a class for Global Majority and Indigenous* artists on recovering from the impact of racism. I shared that art has always been integral to our peoples’ ways of being, long before our artistry was separated out and commodified. Calling ourselves artists might not be easy because classism and racism have made us feel that “being an artist” is something only white middle-class people can claim. Regarding ending the climate crisis, I talked about how our patterns may pull us toward one pole or another: inaction due to feeling discouraged and defeated or overworking and burning out [becoming exhausted] due to being “scared active” and unable to slow down. I talked about caring for ourselves and how our body is our first environment. [* The peoples of Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, and South, Central, and Caribbean America, and Indigenous people, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass. Using the term “Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)” for these people acknowledges their majority status in the world and interrupts how the dominant (U.S. and European) culture assigns them a minority status. Many Global Majority and Indigenous people living in dominant-culture countries have been assimilated into the dominant culture—by force, in order to survive, in seeking a better life for themselves and their families, or in pursuing the economic, political, or other inclusion of their communities. Calling these people “Global Majority and Indigenous” contradicts the assimilation.]
Emily led a class on artists’ oppression and liberation. She spoke about how artists’ liberation is human liberation and how we make art not only to communicate but also to enjoy and delight in being human. She said, “Art is our intelligence in action.”
I led a class on the current state of the environment and our power and clarity as RC leaders to see that all goes well for the whole. I also said, “Wherever you are at is a good place to start.”
Emily and I talked about the importance of recovering from isolation and disconnection—from ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We shared how the workshop had come to be and our relationship with each other.
We are creating the conditions for us as artists to contradict patterns of isolation and competition and to put our attention on the environment. We are gathering, building relationships, and creating networks of support so we can increasingly apply our creativity to how we live and to the world around us.
Jackson Heights, New York, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of wide world change
(Present Time 206, January 2022)