For our submission to the South Tipperary Arts Centre's Open Call: 'Art, Climate, Community', Nocht sought to explore and challenge the relation between creation and destruction, and to query the environmental implications of art-making, commissioning and consumption.
Our proposal, entitled 'Reduce, Reuse, Replay', called for a revitalisation and transformation of our existing work, ‘Play’; a large-scale, interactive wordsearch recursion previously installed by STAC as part of Inside|Out Faoin Spéir Festival and was still in-situ at the proposed location for the ‘Art, Climate, Community’ Open Call. We proposed to re-purpose and augment ‘Play’ by carving into the existing boards the poignant Pablo Picasso quote, “Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction.”
This intervention would have involved the removal of material, revealing the stone wall behind the boards, imprinting new meaning and perspective on not only the existing work, but of the Picasso quote itself.
Re-contextualising the Picasso quote carries significant implications in our current era of climate crisis, where human creation, particularly in industry and development, often comes at the cost of environmental destruction. By embedding this quote in a transformed artwork that uses existing materials and aims minimise additional environmental impact, we sought to underline the urgent need for the reevaluation of our processes of creation in all fields.
In line with the philosophy of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” our intention was to create new art that necessitates no new materials and has minimal associated emissions, illuminating the possibility of sustainable practice in the realm of public art. The work looks to sustainable practices and circular economy principles of other fields, such as construction, where the adaptation of existing structures rather than demolition and rebuild/new build are not only promoted as best practice but is a principle becoming drafted into legislation.
This work interrogates the norm of constant creation of “new work” and raises questions around the motivation, justification and necessity of our collective creative output. In an era where every industry is being scrutinised for its environmental impact and role in the climate crisis, we turn the lens on art and the responsibility of artists and commissioning bodies when considering the emissions and life cycle analysis of the work that we create and cyclical fill our cultural institutions and venues with.
By using existing in-situ materials in order to consciously reduce the environmental footprint of our proposal, we aimed to pose these critical questions: In the context of a society still dependent on fossil fuels, is it possible for the art world to evolve into a truly sustainable human endeavour? What should the shape and form of art be, if it is to truly respond to and act on the issues of climate change in not only its message but its execution? Should the human creativity and the arts sector be shielded from environmental concerns or can we even afford to ignore our collective impact on our society and our environment?
Nocht Studio continues to seek opportunities that might foster new dialogues on sustainability and circular economy principles within the art community and the wider public, encouraging us all to rethink and re-imagine our collective creative practices in the face of climate change.
