So says the science, if you extrapolate it correctly, and any properly developed intuition agrees. Here is the paper that made me think about this:
http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Green%20Products%20Psych%20Sci.pdf The authors are using the concept of "compensatory ethics", which finds people acting as if to maintain a constant ethical level by following good deeds with bad and vice versa. They have all manner of empirical evidence and can graph ethicality like a stock price, showing everyone to be in a constant jitter of fall and redemption. In this particular paper they look at environmental choices. It's all about consumption and exposure, but these are the times we live in: they're psychologists in business schools. What they find is that when somebody *invests* in an environmentally sound choice -- for example, buying expensive green branded detergent -- that person switches to being mean and deceitful for a while. Meanwhile, people who actively make environmentally bad choices (budget detergent) compensate with a period of kindness and honesty. Extrapolating to art is straightforward. If you make a work that is supposed to engender environmental awareness (or any other form of goodness) then you feel entitled to behave dreadfully for a while. The research only looks at simple sins like lying and thieving, but it is not improbable that art-related compensatory behaviour might manifest differently. You might, for instance, become snobbish or boring while making the work, or concentrate your wickedness in the environmental realm by flitting round the world as a busywork extension of your practice[*]. Further research upon artists is likely necessary, because as a group we show (or, you could say, are essentially defined by) atypical responses to economic stimulus. To complicate things, the study found that people's goodness increased in proportion to the amount of green stuff they refused to invest in. That is, if you buy non-green detergent from the organic shop, your ethics improve more than if you buy it from pak'n'save. The propaganda you resist is the propaganda that sticks. Transferred to art, this means that the behaviour of the audience of environmental art *will* improve, provided they don't feel any commitment to it (by payment or participation, for example). So that is the riposte to the obvious contrarian position of making art that encourages waste and disaster: while the recoil affects you negatively vis-a-vis your message, the persuasion affects others positively. Whether these effect balance each other is presumably a function of the audience size. What then should an environmentally concerned artist do? Pump out wholesome work and accept that, as well as your practice seeming a little bland and preachy, you will in counterbalance become ethically contemptible? Or should you ignore the issue and avoid reading dodgy research? Or use said research in the quest for a true and useful answer? Or can you make environmental art without thinking you are doing good (and if so, why are you doing it)? This will look suspiciously convenient, but I can work an ad in here. The theme of ADA's next symposium (Whanganui, 10-12 December, lunch provided, extraordinarily cheap) is approximately "energy", which is of course the central environmental concern these days. You could go to it and help work these things out. The website at http://symposium10.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/ tells you all you need to know. (Beware, though, that the transport section encourages you to travel by bus, train, bicycle, or boat, without consideration of your subsequent compensatory behaviour). Honestly, though, the ad is just fortuitous and I am interested in your reactions to the preceding arguments. Douglas Notes: [*] Actually, you *should* fly on planes to other places. There is nothing better. [+] By "environmental art", I of course mean all art concerned with environmental issues, not just those narrower definitions of art that happens to be out in the wops, or that lays claim to sustainability. _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
