WeatherProof (published essay) (original) (raw)

2010, Lovely Weather: Art and Climate Change

Essay contribution. Published by Donegal County Council 2010 ISBN10 0955656702 What began as a ʻclimate changeʼ (and weather) artist-resicency project, has slowly, inevitably, expanded to encompass issues of land-use, land-care (environmental stewardship), and layers-in-the-land (palimpsest). This is the result of casting the net wide and excavating deep. Accelerated climate change is one consequence of a pervasive world-view-a view that fuels humanityʼs rush to extract the earthʼs finite resources, and which is characterised by a heedlessness of the fragility of delicately balanced systems and ecologies. Whilst the Finn Valley, in Central Donegal, may - for the time being - escape the worst ravages of accelerated global climate change, it is certainly true that the local countryside is, one way or another, enmeshed in the wider global systems. Importantly for this project, there are ways - through revealing ʻunseenʼ and metaphorical connections - for the local community and others to engage with the issues in a rich and holistic way. The Situation: Over time, the subject of weather leads on naturally to thoughts on climate. "The earth has never been in sustained long periods of climate stability, and major climate change episodes like ice ages have been important contributing factors to the long history of human migration, and indeed of evolution of life forms. The challenge of anthropogenic climate change is that it is occurring on time scales short compared to the ability of societies to adapt easily." Roger Malina From the outset, the broad aim was to identify a suitable locality and to explore links between the landscape, ways of life and climate change. A starting points was the idea of ʻslownessʼ, represented visually by the image of a farmer leaning on a field-gate. Early on in the project, I identified the River Finn and its watershed area-The Finn Valley-as a locality for the work. Fieldwork (walking, talking, listening, recording)...