Cornelia Parker On Noam Chomsky And Global Warming
IN “Apocalypse later” Guardian readers learn: “Cornelia Parker’s work has always drawn on a sense of disaster. In her new film, she talks to Noam Chomsky about how art might save the planet.”
It gets even better:
“When I was asked, soon after, to contribute a new work for the Eighth Sharjah biennial in the United Arab Emirates, the biennial’s theme of “art, ecology and the politics of change” seemed like an impossible contradiction – here was an oil-rich country with a profligate consumer society. I felt ambivalent about participating: what role can art play when faced with melting ice caps and political inertia? I am not a propagandist; my work has often had a political dimension, but hopefully one that is not didactic and is open to interpretation. But in this instance, I decided to take the theme of the exhibition head on, and attempt to make a polemical piece.”
Get that? Understand it? Want us to paint a picture? Parker spoke with Chomsky. And created Chomskian Abstract, a film of the meeting:
“In the resulting film, I have taken out my questions but left in the pauses where Chomsky listens, a silent space where people can ask their own questions.” And nip to the loo, or the car.
She concludes:
“There are other things art can do. It can imagine the unimaginable…
Well, but if you can imagine it then it can’t be unimaginable…
“Artists can bear witness. We are free radicals in a way that scientists can never be. Humanity may be on the brink of disaster, but this could be an exciting, creative period, with everyone – philosophers, artists, politicians, bus drivers – doing everything they can to avert it. My Chomsky piece is me putting my head above the parapet.”
Bang! Fetch the pike…
Posted: 12th, February 2008 | In: Broadsheets Comments (7) | TrackBack | Permalink
