Translator: Elisabeth Buffard Reviewer: Maricene Crus
Can you imagine the Renaissance
without Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo?
We are living today a transformation of society, of civilization,
a third Industrial Revolution,
of Anthropocene,
of a transition to the Post-Carbon era...
But where is the artistic movement?
Where are the artists
who follow this second Renaissance?
Every period, every such transformation,
has been preceded, followed
by artistic movements:
Impressionism, the Pre-Raphaelites,
Dada who was born with WWI.
These are the questions I asked myself
at the turn of the century.
I was working at the French State Bank
launching an innovative center dedicated to sustainable development.
And everywhere I would read the term "stakeholders",
stakeholders who represent civil society
and who, if we listen to them,
permit to understand social and environmental issues.
And I was very surprised, among these stakeholders,
to find only NGOs, sometimes labor unions.
I was surprised not to find artists among these stakeholders.
Are not artists precisely the representatives of civil society?
They are beholden to no one
rather, they act in the general interest.
They impart visions and values.
They are often catalysts of new paradigms.
And I realized that in this realm
of sustainable development and the environment,
there was very little talk about art and culture.
Sometimes contemporary art was even considered
as a new extension of capitalism
and vice versa, in the art world,
there was little talk of environmental concerns.
A phenomenon as important as climate change
wasn't much present
and sustainable development tended to be perceived
as an oxymoron,
and ecology as an area of political activism,
or even as an old hippy trip.
And it's true that the driftwood sculptures of the 70's
were the subject of scorn in New York.
So there was a gap
and I told myself that something had to be done.
I organized the first international symposium,
with the artist as a stakeholder.
In that view, with UNESCO,
we conducted the first search
for artists working on themes
related to sustainable development
with a focus on the environment,
essentially visual artists.
And now you are going to see images
that will show you the wealth of discoveries we have made,
from then until today.
Behind these images, you have artists
who are much less attached to the notion of creating art in isolation
rather than acting, being on the field,
in collaboration with stakeholders,
other players, being in the transition,
and you have artists who convey this future world,
with sometimes extremely original ideas.
To resurrect seeds from the Viking Age,
saying that precisely they will be the feeding solutions
to adapt to global warming.
Or to also invent recipes to eat insects,
another solution for adapting to climate change.
To buy permits to pollute, to create solar lights,
imagine new ways of moving,
adopt a square meter of the Amazon rain forest,
extremely original and abundant ideas
which are the proof
that artists are into innovation,
into solutions, much more than into condemnation.
The next step
was to start an association
with a landscaper, a curator
and a philosopher,
who then organized for several years
a prize dedicated to contemporary art and the environment.
We organized exhibitions,
and we have, again,
found a lot of solutions, artists,
and we managed an extra step
in a dialogue that was extremely nascent
between the world of sustainability
and contemporary art.
And during those six years we spent doing that,
other revolutions appeared.
And in 2014, they threw me off balance.
There had been the rise of the social and solidarity economy,
and the figure of the social entrepreneur, who is in social transformation, too,
seemed to me extremely powerful.
In the meantime,
there has been the creation of movements by young people in the whole world
who really were a lot more innovative
than what the traditional NGOs
to mobilize on the subject.
For example, the Climates association which created COP in MyCity,
where everyone performs a role play
in which they take the place of a negotiator
and simulate climate conferences.
There was also the collaborative economy,
peer-to-peer, open data, a lot of movements
which showed that there was a transformation going on.
But social entrepreneurs, artists and these young innovators
worked very independently.
They did not know each other.
Sustainable development means acting together;
so I had the idea to create their meeting.
And I founded Art of Change 21,
the art of change of the 21st century,
21 like COP 21, which was on its way.
When I launched this initiative,
France was about to host this great event.
And like the 21 actors that I went to look for,
to discover around the world,
young people, entrepreneurs, artists
to bring them together in this project.
From Brazil to China
through the United States, Bahrain, New Zealand, Kenya.
I invited 21 of those actors to Paris,
in an event called the Conclave.
They were locked up for two days
and they played the game,
not to be in a competition,
not to highlight their own projects,
not to chose the best project among theirs,
but to exchange and imagine together, as a result of their collaboration,
ideas for actions.
What sustainable development brings to creation is co-creation.
Four ideas emerged from this exchange,
and the great artist Olafur Eliasson, whose images you have seen
in this small panorama that I just showed you,
agreed to be the patron of this initiative
together with social entrepreneur Tristan Lecomte.
So among these four actions,
I want to talk to you about one of them, Maskbook.
Maskbook, you see behind you,
by a Chinese artist named Wen Fang.
She was just telling us about her life in Beijing
where she has to wear an anti-pollution mask.
She said, "In China, we do not have Facebook.
Anyway,
since we all wear anti-pollution masks,
it should be called Maskbook."
And we had the idea to turn around
the anxiety inducing image of this anti-pollution mask
and make it an expressive medium for everyone:
such masks could be created
using each and every one's creative talents, with recycling, DIY,
we also mobilized makers,
we did it on 3D printers, in 3D scan.
We also invented,
from a means as small as a mask,
a way to communicate solutions conveyed by each and every one.
We launched this project for the Paris Climate Conference,
we collected thousands of masks,
we had an exhibition in Beijing, in Paris at the Grand Palais,
we organized dozens of workshops
to precisely introduce to the [circular] economy
the different ways we have,
using this tiny bit of material,
of fabric or whatever else,
to do something and to act on the pollution-climate change link,
which concerns us all:
global warming will accelerate
the effect of pollution in our health.
This is the example of action that comes from this interaction,
that does not question whether it is a work of art or not,
which is addressed to all,
and, of course, I invite you all to create your portrait on Maskbook.
But we will not stop there.
I will not just ask you
to take part in an initiative like Maskbook,
via workshops or a mobile application
that we will launch with the United Nations at the end of the month.
I want to ask you more,
Why?
Some of us have already heard over a thousand times
Gandhi's words,
"Be yourself the change you want to see in the world."
I personally prefer that of the artist Joseph Beuys, who said,
"Each man is an artist."
Today our creativity is at stake.
If we do not change,
if we do not invent a world different from ours,
it will become unliveable.
What is at stake is our ability to create a new world,
with new ways to eat, to move,
to rethink our hobbies, our work,
and for that, your creativity is essential.
All together, using our creativity,
adding it to our neighbour’s,
we can create a universal creativity
that would allow us to succeed in this challenge
of necessary change,
to become ourselves actors of change,
in order to avoid the foretold collapses,
which are our conditions of living and well-being on Earth.
And at this crucial moment, when everyone's creativity is at stake,
artists are our allies, they are our torchbearers.
If we connect to them,
we will be touched by their ingenuity
they will pass on their "virus" to us
to change the world.
If we connect to their imagination,
they will tell us that nothing is impossible.
Artists are our best chance.
Thank you.
(Applause)