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Project work, collaboration on “Sustainability”

Gerardo Montes de Oca Valadez

The damage being caused to the planet, to ourselves and future generations (human and non-human, organic and non-organic) should not be romanticised, mystified and, most of all, should not be justified and supported. I decided to work with the political and economic structures that exploit the concept of sustainability to keep reproducing non-sustainable capitalist practices. In other words, the topic of sustainability refers to unequal access, use, distribution, commodification and profiting of what should be nobody’s property but should belong to all: life. Sustainability also seems to be used as part of a complex strategy to mitigate or twist the perception of such co-optation in order to neutralize people´s criticality and awareness of the environmental negative effects of the contemporary way of life within capital neo-liberalism and keep people´s desire (in the Deleuzean sense) within it. 

 

Some ideas leading the project:

The environmental movement has been appropriated by corporative industries and incorporated into the capitalist discourse with the concept of Sustainability. In this frame:

Sustainability in a large extent serves as a screen to hide the real damage and negative effects our current modern lifestyle carries. A life style created, supported and promoted by political and economic structures. It is also a screen to hide this structural interests. 

The concept is also used to set a frame of apparent freedom of choice, creating socially, politically and environmentally responsible individuals (subjects). The concept helps to release some tensions and make individuals feel “less guilty” and more “responsible”. 

It distracts and divides society addressing the responsibility to other individuals who make other lifestyle choices (or some of them with no choice at all, i. e. in extreme social exclusion), even though only one quarter of all consumption is by individuals and the rest is done by industry, agribusiness, the military, governments and corporations. 

Sustainability frees corporations, governments, media, institutions, etc. from their responsibility, it makes them look good. This structures also create needs, fear and debt in order to maintain the current system.

It even creates a conceptual frame that in a large extent predefines the discussions and debates on it. 

 

Drawing upon schizoanalysis and politics of subjectification I will explore the sustainable discourses, strategies and practices and use them as material, considering different levels from the individual to the corporative. I will follow an open methodology exploring different concepts, materials, mediums and actions for the art production. I am particularly interested on working in the level of micropolitics. 

Fact Box

Project work, collaboration on “Sustainability”
Date
January 30, 2014