Sustainability in an Imaginary World: Art and the Question of Agency(Routledge Studies in Sustainability)

Sustainability in an Imaginary World explores the social agency of art and its connection to complex issues of sustainability. Over the past decade, interest in art’s agency has ballooned as an increasing number of fields turn to the arts with ever-expanding expectations. Yet just as art is being heralded as a magic bullet of social change, research is beginning to throw cautionary light on such enthusiasm, challenging the linear, prescriptive, instrumental expectations such transdisciplinary interactions often imply. In this, art finds itself at a treacherous crossroads, unable to turn a deaf ear to calls for help from an increasing number of ostensibly non-aesthetic fields, yet in answering such prescriptive urgencies, jeopardizing the very power for which its help was sought in the first place. This book goes in search of a way forward, proposing a theory of art aiming to preserve the integrity of arts practices within transdisciplinary mandates. This approach is then explored through a series of case studies developed in collaboration with some of Canada’s most prominent artists, including internationally renowned nature poet Don McKay; Italian composer and Head of Vancouver New Music, Giorgio Magnanesi; the renowned Electric Company Theatre, led by Kevin Kerr; and finally through a largescale multimedia installation aiming to reimagine the relationship between climate, culture, and human agency. Sustainability in an Imaginary World will be of great interest to students and scholars of arts-based research fields, sustainability studies, and environmental humanities.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Section 1: Realigning the art-sustainability relationship Chapter 1 - An Introduction to Sustainability in an Imaginary World Section 1 – Realigning the art-sustainability relationship Section 2 – Artists of the Floating World Section 3 – Sustainability in an Imaginary World Summary Chapter 2 - Sustainability as a failure of ontology What kind of problem is sustainability? A problem for Modernism or about Modernism? The Subjects of Sustainability: Information Deficit Models and the Modernist Problem of Personhood Social Practice The objects of sustainability and the rise of complexity Methodological or Ontological redress? A banishing of science? Or Modernity? Flattening Ontology Procedural Sustainability Flipping the Predicate Regenerative Sustainability The joyful climate crisis? Conclusion Chapter 3 – Art as the Attention we Pay A risky proposition? Value-add or Trade-off? Transformative vs. Co-optive? Two Cautionary Tales A descriptive swing and a miss: The Mozart Effect A prescriptive swing and a miss: Art and science communication Gauging the risk Why do we think art has agency and where does this instinct typically lead? A theory of art for transdisciplinary work? Instauration and the nature of construction Beings capable of worrying you? George Steiner and the ‘Unmastered Thereness’ Heidegger and the ontological agency of art world/earth tensions Tools vs. Art Indirect, Mediated, and Frustrating The agency of the work of art Conclusion: Art as the quality of attention we pay Chapter 4 – Does It Need to be Good to be Useful? Art, Aesthetic Merit, and Research Design In search of the full promise of artistic agency? Tackling a ‘meta’ problem Aesthetic Priorities in Transdisciplinary Art Practices Leavy’s resolution Resistance is fertile? Aligning descriptive and prescriptive orientations Misappropriation of Voice? Aesthetic priorities and democracy? Amateurs, and aesthetic priorities vs. aesthetic merit. Artists? Double Entrepreneurship as our Homeric moment? Section 2: Artists of the Floating World Chapter 5 –Artists of the Floating World: An Art-Sustainability Commissioning Strategy Background Modifying Modernism? Artists of the Floating World Models of/Models for A double agent? Artist selection Commissioning document Evaluation Interviews Artefact analysis The risk? Chapter 6 – A Bard in the Borderlands: The Poetry of Don McKay Introduction Poetry in the borderlands Science or Sentiment? The Double Agent: metaphors to unmap the world Earth in our Worlds Wilderness Poetic Attention New works for Artists of the Floating World The purgatory of trash Thingamajig or Talking to your stick, boots, and chair stick boots rocking chair The thing itself Engaging Thingamajig’s audience Written feedback: love as the unclasping of objectivity Student blog: ‘Thingifying’ at home The perils of ‘listening with language’ Interview 1 Interview 2 Interview 3 Conclusion Chapter 7 – Faith in a World of our Making? The Perils of Interactive Theatre Introduction Modes of Emergence Collaborative creators: The evolution of a devising company Where do plays come from? Immanence, interactivity, and an early need for structure Emergent interactivity Freedom and Structure Collaborative models and the professional artist Imagining the audience: a historical perspective Substantive emergence: writing for an audience vs. writing with an audience Immersive theatre: when the wall came down… Sleep No More: The paragon of the form You Are Very Star development process Substantive emergence: resolving the inkblot-cougar problem Procedural emergence: pushing collaborative creation to new heights True experimentation The normative advantage of emergent process You Are Very Star (brief synopsis) Audience response: life beyond the wall Narrative and character Audience interactivity Art of the Floating World? Chapter 8 - Interactive Music Making: Radical Aesthetics, Radical Politics? Introduction A perplexing result The rise of Musical Modernism The quest for absolute value Composer as hero The emergence of an industry The imagined audience: social or historical? The Late Quartets The origin of value? Rite of Spring: the paradigm case The Zero Hour: music post-World War II Diverging avant-gardes Similar fates Our inescapable humanity? The abdication of Giorgio Magnanensi An encompassing immanence Process over product Interactivity, individuality, democracy Bold experimentation Back at the fork in the road Commissioned work for the GCC: Teatro Dell’udito CIRS Emergent interactivity or grey-green mush? Engagement? Interaction? Meaning? Agency? Emancipating the audience? Pattern seekers The right answer to the wrong question? Back to the fork in the road, only wiser? Chapter 9 - Making Sense of Artists of the Floating World Introduction Development Process Making sense of the results Art, Modernism, and Sustainability Interactivity as a refutation of Modernism A paradox A different problem Aesthetic Priorities Conclusion Section 3: Sustainability in the Imaginary World Chapter 10 - Sustainability in an Imaginary World: The Initial Ideas Design Elements of SIW Sustainability as a challenge of ontology Art as an agent of ontology Scenarios as a compelling partner? Digital capacity as an obvious means? Philosophical indulgence: Policies, Worlds, Axioms A wheel in a wheel? A rocket to the moon or worse? Summary Chapter 11 – Principles of Transdisciplinary Research as a Template for Arts-Based Research? Introduction Principles of Transdisciplinary Practice The SIW development process Phase 1: Researchers Alone Phase 2: Researchers and Artists Phase 3: Artists and Technicians Phase 4: Researchers and Audience SIW and the principles of Transdisciplinary Practice Conclusion Chapter 12 – A glimpse into Sustainability in an Imaginary World General Project Overview 2016 and 2017 2017 Script What was the point? Chapter 13 – Making Art in a Digital World – Thoughts on an Unstable Landscape Introduction Great Expectations Art and Interactivity The Paradox of Interactivity Ax and the Category of Art Walton’s Categories of Art Prescriptive Possibilities? Conclusion Chapter 14 – Evaluating Sustainability in an Imaginary World At the edge of instrumentalization The worst of both worlds? Participant Debriefs The Results Ambiguity and Embodiment Mixed reviews A blessed failure? Layers of Success Creating a compelling encounter Generating deep reflection Multiple fluid perspectives on sustainability Inspiring high-quality dialogue Interactivity and agency But is it the art? The problem with our best data The Problem with our worst data Adjusting SIW evaluation Time Language Inclusion Cause or Effect? Chapter 15 – Hopeful Monster Introduction Making sense of hopeful monsters Crystallization Emergence Resonance Aligning with a dyadic theory of art Abandoning the mission? Considering SIW as a hopeful monster Conclusion

About the Author :
David Maggs carries on an active career as an interdisciplinary artist and arts-researcher. He is the founder and pianist for Dark by Five (darkbyfive.com), has written works for the stage, and collaborated on large augmented reality projects. David is the artistic director of the rural Canadian interarts festival Gros Morne Summer Music (gmsm.ca), founder and publisher of a digital arts magazine (oldcrowmagazine.com), and the director of The Graham Academy, a youth performing arts training academy. He initiated and co-produced the CBC documentary The Country. As an academic David focuses on arts practices and the challenge of sustainability. His doctoral thesis Artists of the Floating World led to the SSHRC-funded Sustainability in the Imaginary World led by Principal Investigator John Robinson (www.imaginesustainability.today). His research attempts to understand sustainability as a cultural challenge, and to make sense of art as a driver of social impacts. He has been a featured speaker at the Canadian Arts Summit, The International Transdisciplinarity Conference, the National Valuing Nature Conference, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), and elsewhere. John Robinson is a Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Visiting Professor at Utrecht University in 2019. At U of T, he is Presidential Advisor on the Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability, and heads up the Sustainable Built Environment Performance Assessment (SBEPA) research network. His research focuses on the intersection of climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainability; the use of visualization, modelling and citizen engagement to explore sustainable futures; sustainable buildings and urban design; the role of the university in contributing to sustainability; creating partnerships for sustainability with non-academic partners; the history and philosophy of sustainability; and, generally, the intersection of sustainability, social and technological change, ways of thinking, and community engagement processes.