El arte ante los nuevos retos socio-ambientales. Arte medioambiental: enfoques desde la ecología

Abstract

Today's ongoing crisis is forcing us to confront the following dilemma: either continue the prevailing growing politics and thus accept the environmental destruction that ensues or take ecology seriously by limiting growing to sustainability.

So far, eco-efficiency has proved insufficient to reach sustainability. And ecological thinking has been for decades arguing that it is necessary to stop and dramatically decrease Western growing and wasting, that is to say, to shift today's Western paradigm and live differently. That cultural change should affect all spheres, art included. For art itself can and should contribute to reflect on our position, attitude, role and ethics towards nature and help to understand that humans are part of it.

It is true that since the end of xx century there have been some environmentally friendly art initiatives. However, few of them can be considered radical, committed and decidedly ecological aesthetics. It is necessary to set, from a real ecologically sustainable point of view, the criteria that distinguish one type of art from another ecologically driven.