Art has two continuous and never-ending tasks: it always reflects on mortality, and thus it always creates life.
(Pihkala 2019, 81)
In previous essays, I have sought to outline steps towards more eco-socially sustainable new media art and and lighting design for contemporary performances.
In the first essay, Lighting design that fits in a backpack, I applied the writer Ursula Le Guin’s idea of the metaphorical “carrier bag” as an alternative to “heroic lighting design.” In the essay, I concluded that a step towards more eco-socially sustainable production is questioning the necessity of the technology used, examining the material connections related to technology, and striving for more simplified expression. The technological “lightness” that arises from reduction may help lessen the environmental impact of performance processes and expand the designer’s role in new directions, freeing up time for collective negotiation, for example. It is also important to be aware that using green energy sources like solar panels can still pollute the environment elsewhere and may be linked to human rights violations if the background of the technology provider is not checked. Additionally, the current development of LED technology has not reduced energy consumption due to the so-called rebound effect.
In the essay Alternative llight sources and planetary movements, I explored how nurturing “dim” conditions is ecologically significant in our “over-illuminated” world, benefiting both human and non-human well-being. A new media artwork based on light and sound can also be constructed from existing structures in the environment. A more eco-socially sustainable work might be created by sharing authorship with planetary movements or even weather conditions. What kind of spatial-temporal perspective can the viewer of a piece adopt in a particular place?
The third essay, Lighting design without electricity, focused on lighting a performance with live fire. Although I disconnected from the electrical grid, the materials used for the candles mostly originated from palm oil plantations in the Amazon. I also concluded that a performance or acoustic concert held during a crisis, such as a power outage, might have particular potential for eco-social change at the local level. At the same time, non-electrified theatre lights symbolize a memory of fossil capitalism.
The conclusions from the previous essays do not mean that lighting design for contemporary performances must revert to the times of antiquity and live fire. However, I encourage reflection on responsibility and expanding solution-oriented design work, which takes into account the material connections of technology, power dynamics, and energy use. How do we pollute, and how are we “polluted”?
For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that current electricity demand will double by 2040. If overall consumption does not decrease, neither will our ecological burden. Ultimately, the only viable future option will likely be to reduce resource use (Tanskanen & Kuoppa 2023, 227).
In the essay International work without travel, I compared the use of XR technology to the carbon dioxide emissions from air travel. Installing a new media artwork or exploring a performance venue using simple XR technology significantly reduces emissions, especially if the technology is used actively over a decade. It is essential to take care of the technology so that it lasts. XR technology also serves as an excellent measurement tool in set design for performances. Additionally, it is possible to remotely control the lighting of contemporary performances. I first experimented with remote control during the creation of the Svett piece amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the electricity consumption of soon-to-be-activated metaverses is immense. The growth of information and communication technology will increase emissions and the amount of electronic waste as we move into the 2030s. All communication services depend on people owning smart devices, and this consumption of “immaterial” services translates to greater extraction of physical minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, and copper, as well as human labour in mines, primarily in the Global South (Tanskanen & Kuoppa 2023, 228). As for travel, by the 2040s, future think tanks are predicting the introduction of personal carbon dioxide passports.
In the fifth essay, I explored the potential of using dramaturgical tools in multidisciplinary teamwork. At the core of performance designers’ skills is the ability to find hidden connections between different materials, create new perspectives, and compose spatial-temporal arrangements that produce experiential meaning. I aim to encourage performance designers, artists, and researchers to engage in open-minded and playful collaboration – after all, a “stage” can be created anywhere! Play, in a goal-oriented world without a clear objective, is a radical act that can be filled with insights for an eco-socially sustainable future.
In the essay Site-specific emotional experiences as catalysts for environmental connection, I highlighted the importance of becoming attuned to place, so that the eco-socially sustainable signals already budding in communities could be strengthened through artistic experiences. Sensitivity tools could include ethnographic methods, such as the sensobiographic walking, which I introduced in the essay on dramaturgical work. An eco-socially significant act could also be the implementation of a participatory, site-specific “mirror” that allows space for various emotions, including grief. If people can actively participate in the creation of art, the impact is even greater than merely observing an artwork. Grief over the ecological crisis brings comfort, and through experiencing it, new beginnings can be built. The context in which a piece is realized matters – an eco-socially positive impact on the environment may be much greater in a place full of conventions than among an already well-aware audience in the Helsinki metropolitan area.
In my essays, I did not address the overall carbon footprint of artistic events, as there are already many excellent guides and calculators available for promoting more environmentally friendly practices in art institutions, some of which I mentioned in the Introduction.
The Reorientations project has been an exceptional and transformative moment for me. In the past fifteen years of my professional career, I have never had the opportunity to stop and reflect on and organize the events happening around me, as life is often dominated by its overwhelming busyness. This is mainly due to the low pay and constantly uncertain work situations.
The goal of my project’s work plan was to reflect, dismantle, and rebuild my artist identity in the midst of the ecological crisis. This process truly came to fruition. The reflective essays I have written contain eco-socially sustainable working methods that now form the foundation for my future artistic work. A new horizon has opened up, and in its dim light, strange and still unfamiliar, but intriguing landscapes are slowly beginning to take shape. The artistic examples I have presented in the essays are also available for your use and further development, should you wish – please, feel free!
Although a new horizon has opened up before me, this has also required letting go of the old.
In the fall of 2020, as I was writing the project application text for Reorientations I thought that taking time for reflective work might allow me to work more mentally, physically, and eco-socially sustainably in theatres. However, things turned out differently.
In my experience, theatre industry training and the processes of performance work are largely based on leadership through conflict, crisis, or the threat of crisis. Working in theatres had become a constant struggle for survival for me, and my resources were running low. Eco-socially sustainable values were buried under constant pressure, compromises, rush, and stress. Since 2015, working on multidisciplinary new media art projects had already expanded my authorship into other contexts and ways of making art, so working on performances began to feel alien and unsustainable. As theologian and researcher Panu Pihkala, who works at the University of Helsinki, succinctly puts it:
Everyone who has carried a backpack or a rucksack knows that it’s not just about the load itself, but the load in relation to a person’s carrying capacity. A person is usually surprisingly resilient, and their capacity grows with the weight they carry. But there is a limit to everything. Excessive loads take away the ability to function and the joy of life. Three things are needed: suitable individual loads, sufficient breaks for rest between carrying, and the sharing of burdens together. At its best, a shared journey is when, during someone’s weaker moment, someone else carries more of the load.
(Pihkala 2019, 76)
Time is also limited, and for the experience of meaningfulness and values to lead toward a truly sustainable future, I simply had to give up some ways of working that were harmful to both myself and the environment. It was time to turn off the lights on the theatre stage. My last work in theatre was the piece sky every day, created with the WAUHAUS arts collective, which explores the coexistence of seagulls and humans in a beach resort, premiering at & Espoo Theatre in September 2023 (WAUHAUS 2023).
Cultural anthropologist Anna Tsing notes in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015/2020) that in popular imagination, survival means saving one’s own skin by fighting alone against others. For example, in American films and television series, “survival” is synonymous with conquest and expansion. However, Tsing does not use survival in the same sense; she emphasizes that survival requires cooperation. Tsing uses the term “contamination” to refer to the process in which individuals influence each other in conscious relationships and change as a result of these encounters. This is essential for maintaining a liveable planet and diverse ecosystems. According to Tsing, only an awareness of interconnectedness and the web of relationships can generate entirely new directions and worlds (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2020, 45–48).
Sources
Lowenhaupt Tsing, Anna. 2020. Lopun aikojen sieni. Elämää kapitalismin raunioissa (The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capital Ruins, 2015). Translated by Anna Tuomikoski. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto.
Pihkala, Panu. 2019. Päin helvettiä? Ympäristöahdistus ja toivo. Helsinki: Kirjapaja. (E-book).
Tanskanen, Riina & Kuoppa, Samu. 2023. Kapitalismin suuri illuusio. Helsinki: Into.
WAUHAUS. 2023. “sky every day.” www.wauhaus.fi/sky-every-day Accessed 18 October 2024.