Plasticity of the Planet: On Environmental Challenge for Art and Its Institutions

Plasticity of the Planet: On Environmental Challenge for Art and Its Institutions

Can plastic planetarism replace neoliberal globalization? This publication is informed by Catherine Malabou’s conception of destructive plasticity – an irreversible destruction of form that makes it possible for new phenomena to emerge. It is embraced here for the purpose of reflection on an environmental crisis that before our very eyes is turning into an increasingly serious social crisis. This is a challenge that neither contemporary art nor its institutions can remain indifferent to. They must urgently find their responses to it. The theoretical essays contained here shed light on the nature and consequences of the destructive changes taking place in the natural/social environment. They have been juxtaposed with artists’,curators’, and art researchers’ comments on more specific practices,protocols, or formats of reaction, with the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art serving as a particular, though not the only, case study here. In a conversation carried out specially for the book, Catherine Malabou speaks of the consequences of man’s destructive activities and introduces the notion of ecological plasticity.

Contributors: Defne Ayas, Viviana Checchia, Grzegorz Czemiel, Daniel Falb, Cathy Fitzgerald, Mira Gakjina, Alexander Hope, Anne Szefer Karlsen, Jarosław Lubiak, Małgorzata Ludwisiak, Ewa Majewska,Catharine Malabou, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Małgorzata Sugiera, Magdalena Ziółkowska