Dougald Hine

Art is not a cheap alternative to an advertising agency or a sophisticated extension of the communications department, and the urgency of the message doesn’t change this

There’s a bridge between people’s experiences with these more-than-human “living cultures” and the work of regrowing our ways of being human together. They offer images that reflect, backwards and forwards, helping us give words to the work that is called for.

If the question is not made explicit – if the existence of upstream questions, these questions that take us beyond the boundaries of what science can tell us about climate change, is not recognised – then the default answer will be to treat it as bad luck and pursue some combination of techno-fixes and lifestyle adjustments.

This is the place, I want to say, where work which has no obvious or direct connection to the suffering, cruelty and injustice in our news feeds may nonetheless be part of what is called for in response.

In the darkest hour, that which is meant to be obsolete may yet make all the difference. 

Given the ubiquitous nature of this animistic intuition among the diverse indigenous peoples of this planet – given its commonality among so many exceedingly diverse and divergent cultures – it would seem that this is our birthright as humans.