The Intent Of My Practice
Currently, the intent of my practice is to express my deep concern about the climate crisis. I see this crisis as the single biggest issue for humanity to deal with. The threat is real and the effects are being felt now.
So I would like my practice to speak up for this issue. Other practitioners have decided to do the same and I cite some of them in a separate CRJ post: http://18.132.134.179/crj/influences/
I realise that there are many challenges here. In order to have a voice that people hear, I need to gain standing, I need to have some authority and my work needs to be interesting. It is no longer enough to illustrate articles about climate with pictures of glaciers and polar bears. People (humans like you and me) across the world are experiencing the effects of climate change at first hand. They are experiencing droughts, floods, fires and threats to their property. These effects need to documented, represented and effectively projected in the public realm, to fuel discussion, activism and progressive change.
So my intent is to build a body of work and present that work in ways that influence opinion.
In some ways, my work could be understood as advertising or PR for the climate movement. I don’t quite see it like that, but I did think it would be amusing to make an effort at a climate change advertisement.
With apologies to Calvin Klein.
So far, I have contributed pictures to Extinction Rebellion for use in their media and messaging activities. I would like to create exhibitions of my work to speak about my concerns. I would like to present my work as part of talks to interested groups.
It remains to be seen if these strategies could be described as successful. Success has to be defined: the number of people who see the work, changes that can be attributed to the presence of the work. I can, however, know that I am doing work which is important and meaningful to me and fulfills the obligation I feel to the climate movement.