Climates

This was one of the hottest summers on record, though we won’t have the statistics to prove it until after we go to press. While making this issue, we experienced relentless heat waves, which, one day, materialized as sublime, dark, gathering clouds visible through our office windows—somewhat of a welcome sight during the late afternoon workday. This is a common understanding of how the apocalypse will look: something frightening on the horizon, a violent and quickly moving storm. But the clouds passed, briefly and beautifully. It’s tempting to relate all weather patterns to global warming, which of course cannot be reduced to a single event. Climate change won’t pass. Try as we might, it cannot be seen in a single image, or contained by the visual.

This is not an issue about what we see, but about what we register, and don’t register. Foremost it is an issue about how artists can help us register change. And it is, undoubtedly, an issue about the human impact on a variety of climates, and on the concept of climate itself. Our Planet of the Apes–style cover, by Calgary artist Jason de Haan, seems both speculative and satirical, playing on the concept of the carbon footprint while prompting our most romantic ideas of a post-human future. It also draws attention to the carbon footprint as a metaphor—and a fear-based fantasy. Surely, carbon tracking and offsetting is just another way we shift, rather than solve, a problem.

In producing an issue on “Climates,” we found it impossible to avoid a term that is becoming increasingly widespread: the Anthropocene. The term is charged and contested, but at its simplest, it suggests our current geologic era is irrevocably shaped by human activity. To consider the Anthropocene is thus to consider ourselves. It is an introspective and critical gesture, and must be about examining power relations, not just human/non-human relations. It must take into account colonialism, how some are more responsible than others. We live in a time of perpetual crisis and chaos; to be fatigued by it is a measure of privilege. Here, an issue about a variety of uncomfortable climates that affect artists, their work and the art world. Here, art and ideas without the air conditioning.

—David Balzer, Editor-in-Chief/Co-Publisher, Jayne Wilkinson, Managing Editor