September
28th – October 2nd, 2020 Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic Te Kura Matatini ki Otago, Dunedin Ötepoti
The Complete Entanglement of Everything
Bridie LonieThe world is changing
around us in ways that are sometimes more, sometimes less evident or explicit. In Ötepoti they are present, but far more so
in megacities such as Kolkata, or Shangahai, low islands like Kiribati, or desertifying regions like the Murray-Darling Basin
of Australia. Those changes are reflected in the term Anthropocene, a catch-all term used from the beginning of this
century to indicate the transition from the stable climates of the Holocene period that had nurtured most human experience,
to a far more dynamic climate caused by global warming. There are as many alternatives to the term as there are positions
about what has caused the destabilization of our ecosystems, so the term is used here to open rather than close discussion.
Indeed, when earth scientists sought evidence in the planet’s strata to ratify the term as a geological period produced
by human behaviour, they found radionuclides, plastics and agricultural fertilizers. These, as much as climatic changes, have
led to transformations in the ecosystems that were once regarded as more stable than anything humans could make. They are
implicated in the cause of global warming: the emissions of greenhouse gases as a by-product of the energy required to fuel
the economic system that most people now see as normal, natural and unalterable. Yet the irreversible changes in the planet’s
weather systems are caused by the exponential growth in the use of fossil-fuelled technology for a human population that has
itself been growing exponentially. The growth of these technologies has quickened since the latter part of the eighteenth
century, although the seeds were sown long before as humans developed industrialized systems for agriculture that were tied
to commerce.
Exhibition:28 September - 2 October, 2020
Hours:10am to 4pm Monday to Friday
Opening Celebration:26 September 4.30-6.30pm , all welcome
Venue:Dunedin School of Art, Riego Street, (off Albany Street), Dunedin
https://artsymposium.op.ac.nz/More information