In its 13-year history, the nonprofit foundation Cape Farewell has worked with more than 300 artists to create cultural and artistic responses to climate change. It has commissioned works of art, hosted artists in residency and, from its offices in London and Toronto, organized festivals and exhibitions in Paris, Chicago, New York City, Marfa, Texas, and across Canada. Given the variety and scale of work the organization has produced, it’s hard to believe that Cape Farewell began as the brainchild of one artist, David Buckland.
In 2001, Buckland, a photographer and filmmaker, became interested in the artistry of mathematical models, which scientists were using to project future scenarios based on current data. The model makers encouraged him to speak to oceanographers who had gathered information on rising sea levels and other effects of climate change. He recalls, “The oceanographers were jumping up and down, saying, ‘Why isn’t anyone listening to us?” He told them, “Because you’re talking in a language that is a mystery to 90 percent of the population.” Buckland decided to find a way to “take science language and translate it into narratives, pure storytelling that would engage the public.”
He formed a nonprofit supported by several foundations, arts councils and private donors, and recruited a board of directors. He then began convening gatherings, bringing together groups of climate scientists with artists—including poets, writers, sculptors, filmmakers and photographers. His hope was that after “bombarding these 20 creative souls with information,” they would be inspired to respond with art in their own media.
“I never have a contract with the artists,” he explains. “I say, ‘Come and absorb everything. Come with the willingness to make something.’” Supporting as yet unseen, unplanned works “is difficult to sell to funders,” he says, but provides the artists with welcome freedom.
In Cape Farewell’s early years, its gatherings of artists and scientists took the form of expeditions to the Arctic (Ian McEwan’s novel Solar was inspired by his time on a Cape Farewell voyage). But three years ago, Cape Farewell held a retreat in Toronto for 20 artists and a group of “informers,” including economists and social scientists looking at the impact of technology and trade on climate. Before the end of the retreat, Buckland says, the artists were given a tour of the Contemporary Culture exhibition space at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). “We said: In two years’ time, this is where your work will be shown. Come up with something.” Work that participants produced, as well as other projects selected by Claire Sykes, the curator and programming director of Cape Farewell’s North American organization, were shown during Carbon 14: Climate is Culture, an arts festival held from October 2013 through February 2014.
In addition to the ROM exhibition, Carbon 14 featured a play, performances, lectures and other exhibitions held around Toronto and in other cities. A museum in Kitchener, Ontario, for example, hosted “Currents,” an exhibition of aerial images by photographer Eamon Mac Mahon on the subject of water use.
Sykes says that when Cape Farewell holds retreats, it typically invites artists who haven’t previously addressed climate issues, “but would if they were exposed to this knowledge.” The only criteria for the work Cape Farewell commissions, Buckland says, is that it not be “a sermon.” He says, “If we stray from that, and it starts to look like propaganda or it starts to look preachy, then we stop.”
Photography is “an extraordinary language,” he says, but the medium is limiting because it is “very much about the here and now.” As a self-described “lens-based artist,” Buckland feels that, unlike poets or writers who can describe a vision of the future, photographers face a challenge if they want to create something more evocative than “a catalogue of disasters.”
The lens-based works in Carbon 14 that Buckland believes were most successful include Canadian photojournalist Donald Weber’s show at the ROM, “Quniqjuk, Qunbuq, Quabaa.” Inspired by filmmaker Robert Flaherty’s 1930s portraits of Inuits lit by lamps burning whale oil, Weber asked Inuits to pose for portraits lit only by the glow from their mobile phones and iPads. Prints were mounted on 4-x-6-foot sheets of aluminum faced with Plexiglas. Buckland calls the series “passionate, atmospheric,” while also illustrative of the vast and rapid spread of technology. Weber, who participated in the Toronto retreat, is currently working with Cape Farewell to find funding for an expedition on the Mackenzie River, and to plan an installation of the stills and video he will produce.
Also shown at the ROM was Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas’s video A Draught of the Blue, about a protest over the deterioration of a coral reef off the coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico, which threatens the livelihood of local residents. Inspired by a Cape Farewell retreat, Toronto-based artist Melanie Gilligan and London-based writer Tom Ackers collaborated on Deep Time, a multi-screen installation that was shown at the ROM, online and on public video screens. Buckland calls it “a very smart look at the mineral trade,” mixing film, animation and narration.
Buckland says of “Drowning World,” a long-term project by London-based photographer Gideon Mendel on people coping with flooding in Nigeria, Thailand, England, Germany and elsewhere, “He’s dealing with floods, but he’s not just looking at a place full of water. They’re portraits. It’s a human story, and that’s where photography can be interesting.”
During Carbon 14, “Drowning World” was shown on screens in shopping centers across Canada, thanks to a partnership between Pattison Onestop, an outdoor advertising company, and Cape Farewell. Sykes notes that many of the artists Cape Farewell works with “are interested in outlets outside that white cube” of traditional exhibition spaces.
Photographer Donald Weber calls Cape Farewell “a great organization.” He says he enjoyed the Carbon 14 retreat and adds, “I also like that serious funding and money was sought for the work we wanted to do.” Buckland notes, however, “We’re always desperately short of funding.” Partnerships with festivals and arts organizations around the world who ask Cape Farewell to contribute programming help extend the reach of the work Cape Farewell supports.
Buckland says that in recent years, Cape Farewell has moved from gathering proof that man-made climate change is real—“Climate change is a fact,” he states—to working with organizations trying to find solutions. This year, for example, the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay Ltd., which wants to harness the tides off the Welsh coast to generate electric power, asked Cape Farewell to hold an open call for proposals for sculptures and art to be installed on the grounds of the future power station. Buckland says roughly 300 entries were submitted from around the world.
Real change in the way we consume, use technology, and treat the environment requires “a cultural shift” that encompasses “the way we construct societies,” Buckland says. Speaking from Cape Farewell’s office housed in the University of London, Buckland says he’s encouraged that young artists he meets are interested in making relevant work that spurs action or discussion. “They don’t just want to make objects that have value in the market,” he says. “It’s a different measure of what it means to be an artist. I find that exciting.”
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