Inhalt: #7 – Herbst 2006
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS
GLOBAL WARMING AND ART
ULAS AKTAS
MUSIK IN DER MUSIK
CLAUS-STEFFEN MAHNKOPF
WAS HEISST KRITISCHES KOMPONIEREN
ALWYNNE PRITCHARD
A RETURN HOME TO NO PLACE
NIELS RØNSHOLDT
WRONG MOVES
MARCUS SCHMICKLER
KUNST UND KAUSALITÄT
DANIEL N. SEEL
ESSAY
ADSON ZAMPRONHA
A REBIRTH OF RHETORIC IN RECENT CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Some say the world will end by fire. Others say by ice. Here in Alaska, the land of snow and ice, we’re beginning to feel the fire.
In the summer of 2000 the Iñupiat community of Barrow – the farthest north settlement on the mainland of North America – had its first thunderstorm in his-tory. Tuna were sighted in the Arctic Ocean. No one had ever seen them this far North before.
The following winter Lake Illiamna on the Alaska Peninsula didn’t freeze over. No one, not even the oldest Native elders, could remember this happening. In Fairbanks for the first time in memory the temperature never dropped to 40 below. Months of unseasonably warm temperatures, scant snowfall and constantly-changing winds were followed by an early spring. This was not the exhilarating explosion, the sud-den violence of the sub-Arctic spring. It was the slow attrition of dripping eaves and rotting snow.
Once again this year, winter never really arrived. South Central Alaska experienced a violent storm with the highest winds ever registered there. The Iditarod dogsled race had to be moved hundreds of miles north because there was not enough snow. Here in Fairbanks, the mean temperature from September through February was the warmest on record. In November and again in February, we had freezing rain. At the small community of Salcha, the ice on the Tanana River broke free of the banks and jammed up, flooding nearby homes and roads. This is something that happens in April or May, not in the middle of winter.
Researchers have been predicting for years that the effects of global climate change will appear first and most dramatically near the Poles. From 1971 through 2000, the annual mean temperature in Alaska rose by 2.69 degrees Fahrenheit. (On a global scale, an increase of this magnitude would be cataclysmic.) The volatile weather patterns of the past decade have been accompanied by other warning signs. Glaciers are melting at increasing rates. The sea ice is retreating, disrupting subsistence whale hunting and bringing storm waves that are eroding the land out from under coastal villages. The spruce bark beetle is advancing north, the summer wildfire season is increasing in length and intensity, and the permafrost under the boreal forest is dissolving. Interior Alaska was once an inland ocean. It may become one again. The weather is sick. The northern jet stream has drifted south, and southern weather has drifted north. Our neighbors – the moose, the white spruce, the boreal owl, the paper birch, and the snowshoe hare – know things we have long forgotten. Now it’s time for us to wake up from the dream we’ve been living, time to remember.
In the North as in the South, we drive around in bigger and bigger vehicles on big-ger and bigger highways, hoping that if we just keep moving fast enough it won’t all catch up with us. But it’s already here. The North has become the South. And as we’re chattering on our cell phones, retrieving our voicemail, zooming around town or running to catch our next flight somewhere, the polar ice is melting.
What does global climate change mean for art? What is the value of art in a world on the verge of melting?
An Orkney Island fiddler once observed: “Art must be of use.” By counterpoint, John Cage said: “Only what one person alone understands helps all of us.”
Is art an esoteric luxury? Do the dreams and visions of art still matter?
An artist lives between two worlds – the world we inhabit and the world we imagine. Like surgeons or teachers, carpenters or truck drivers, artists are both workers and citizens. As citizens, we can vote. We can write letters to our elected officials and to the editors of our newspapers. We can speak out. We can run for office. We can march in demonstrations. We can pray.
Ultimately though, the best thing artists can do is to create art: to compose, to paint, to write, to dance, to sing. Art is our first obligation to ourselves and our children, to our communities and our world. Art is our work. An essential part of that work is to see new visions and to give voice to new truths.
Art is not self-indulgence. It is not an aesthetic or an intellectual pursuit. Art is a spiritual aspiration and discipline. It is an act of faith. In the midst of the darkness that seems to be descending all around us, art is a vital testament to the best qualities of the human spirit. As it has throughout history, art expresses our belief that there will be a future for humanity. It gives voice and substance to hope. Our courage for the present and our hope for the future lie in that place in the human spirit that finds solace and renewal in art.
Art embraces beauty. But beauty is not the object of art, it’s merely a by-product. The object of art is truth. That which is true is that which is whole. In a time when human consciousness has become dangerously fragmented, art helps us recover wholeness. In a world devoted to material wealth, art connects us to the qualitative and the immaterial. In a world addicted to consumption and power, art celebrates emptiness and surrender. In a world accelerating to greater and greater speed, art reminds us of the timeless.
Excerpt from John Luther Adams: Global Warming and Art
Read more in the physical issue #7 !