What is sustainability?
In the dominant climate change and environmental discourses, ecological sustainability has essentially become a synonym of ‘no CO2 emissions’, which most often means ‘net zero CO2 emissions’ (i.e. compensating CO2 emissions via carbon markets).
Thus in the arts, logically, the current discourse around sustainability most often revolves around reducing and/or compensating for flying, as well as recycling and reusing material or consciously producing it, and other similar measures towards reducing carbone emissions and conserving ressouces.
But focusing on CO2 emissions obscures and distracts from the fact that flying and material production are both merely symptoms of a artistic project-based system which constrains artists into an accumulation of projects and international touring dates as a matter of ‘bankability’.
Here lies a (the?) deeply capitalistic nature of the artistic product(ion)-oriented system: it operates on the basis of names and labels accumulation as base currency, constantly exchanged among artists and institutions, who both thrive on artistic legitimation (1) (a trend which the pandemic could also reinforce, privileging established names over more precarious artistic positions).
This is what is fundamentally unsustainable in the (performing) arts context.
Sustainability as a matter of the relations within a given ecosystem
Sustainability, thus, pertains in fact to the nature and structure of relations within a given ecosystem, and is not definable in itself.
Rather than a matter of reducing CO2 emissions, sustainability should therefore be considered as a question which can only be met with situated, contextual – i.e. relational – answers. In doing so, we can reopen space for debate and conflict around what is sustainability, maintaining its openness and relevancy to new situations and viewpoints.
Once sustainability becomes relational – or said differently once the universal all-encompassing standpoint is abandoned to the benefit of ‘situated’ (2), multiple viewpoints and interrelations – sustainability can be reconstructed as a process, i.e. a practice, or rather practices, of sustaining a continuous debate and negotiation about what might eco-socially beneficial relationships mean here and now.
Sustainability becomes here a shared responsibility which in turn transforms how we as humans relate to each other and to the wider supporting ecosystem.
In this way, sustainability can be made a site of empowerment, where an inclusive awareness for needs, purposes, desires and opportunities in the present replaces setting predetermined targets (such as that of reaching net zero CO2 emissions above any other (social) considerations).
Importantly for the arts, and society at large, this is the only way to ensure that (transcontinental) cultural and artistic diversity is not thrown away in the name of a strict reduction in mobility-related CO2 emissions.
A change of future paradigm: from ‘target-oriented future’ to ‘futures as processes in the making‘
Just as we wouldn’t like the present to be determined by our grandparents’ values and visions, we shouldn’t determine today values and futures for subsequent generations (Riel Miller 2007).
Considering sustainability as a question rather than a predetermined target represents nothing else but a change of future paradigm. It is a shift from a future envisioned as a goal to be reached in a more or less distant time-space (i.e. the naturalized way of thinking about the future in terms of making plans, i.e. forecasting or foresight), to futures envisioned as open-ended processes in the making.
Rather than finding orientation for the future (as conventional futures studies typically do), the aim then becomes that of keeping futures open.
In order to better grasp this reversal, I often rely as a matter of illustration on Swiss travel writer Nicolas Bouvier. At the outset of his travelogue The Way of the World (2009/1963), he writes: “Traveling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you – or unmaking you.” (2009/1963).
It is not the traveller who is making a journey, but rather the journey which is (un)making the traveller. Bouvier qualifies it as a matter of letting oneself drift (dériver) in the world without predetermined goals, which allows to experience again the present moment, to make the journey for its own sake, available to and curious of what may come.
The German proverb “Der Weg ist das Ziel” (the journey is the aim) transmits this same reversal from an enclosed target-oriented future, to futures as open processes in the making.
Predefined goals have no future in a changing world
In trying to reach set goals and instrumentalize the present for the sake of the future, we actually close ourselves off from what is underway here and now, discarding the potential of the present to the benefit of elusive futures.
In doing so, we also often entertain an illusion of determinism, i.e. the idea that the world won’t change in surprizing, unforeseeable ways. Moreover, we forget that in the meantime we ourselves will change, so that desired goals, once reached, sometimes do not meet our needs or aspirations anymore.
The truth is that we are being transformed by the world as much as we are transforming it – here lies the complex relationality of our transformative ‘journey’ with(in) the world.
Making predetermined plans for the future is thus always about denying ourselves and the living world an essential disposition for change, for becoming different, in unpredictable ways. Acknowledging uncertainty, in particular the “unpredictable” agency of human and living systems (Arendt, Human Condition 1958) leads to give up ‘colonizing’ the future for potentially disappointing ends.
There is no future for predefined goals in an ever changing world.
In fact, if we could know the future, it would mean that the future would be ‘written’ (by god(s)) or predetermined (by scientific laws). The uncertainty of the future therefore is the primary condition to free, meaningful agency.
Working with the uncertainty of the future, or “dancing on the unknown“
Against this background, what becomes essential is giving up the willingness to know and control what we call ‘the future’, which manifests through deep-rooted beliefs, rationalistic habits of thoughts and mechanistic understandings of causes and effects, all of which forecloses an authentic confrontation (awareness) with the here and now in its complexity, in its incompleteness and potentiality.
“Staying with the trouble” says Donna Haraway. “Dancing on the unknown” writes future researcher Riel Miller (2007).
All of this is highly relevant to the (performing) art world whose project-based (funding) system tends to foreclose a genuine and open approach to artistic work, such as that of practice-based artistic research.
More importantly now, the pandemic offers a defining metaphor of this ‘journey’ where the inherent contingency of our biological (social, cultural) condition humbles us to work with open-ended processes (i.e. practices) rather than clear set goals (i.e. projects).
As uncertainty is growing, the future (of the arts) does not lie in making plans, but much rather in finding ways for transformative – or, as is it now sometimes named, regenerative – and sustainable (artistic) practices.
Expanded awareness for what is? and what if?
Once we reach this mindset, we can turn ourselves to the present and work towards deepening our awareness for processes underway, as many possibilities offered here and now.
For if the future is fundamentally indeterminate, this is because the present contains the seeds for countless possible futures.
Thus, the possibilities lie in the present – as evidenced by chaos theory with the so-called butterfly effect (3): small changes in initial conditions can lead to greatly different outcomes.
Any future thinking should thus confront itself with a deeper understanding of both what is through expanded sense making and making sense of the less visible present, as well as of what if? as the sum of potentialities and speculation from the present into the future.
Thinking futures with both ‘what is (less visible)?’ and ‘what if?’ is what I coin ‘futures as processes in the making’ (4).
Empowerment is a capacity to aspire to the future
In making ourselves available and resonant to the real in its complexity and interconnectedness, we can reconstruct another appreciation of our (collective) possibilities, and with it new expectations, from which emerges a renewed sense of self and collective efficacy, and with it (collective) agency.
This is precisely the emancipatory work undertaken by social movements, which sense anew and reinvent the current established social understandings – e.g. making visible women’s "reproductive work" – as a prerequisite to reclaiming alternative, more sustainable futures for themselves.
Cultural anthropologist Appadurai (2013) calls this the “capacity to aspire”. Without a “capacity to aspire,” actually no emancipatory agency is possible. In fact, empowerment is about the possibility to aspire to the future.
But just as there is limited empowerment in simply claiming access to leadership positions for women, there is limited empowerment in reclaiming one single utopia. A deeper empowerment arises from opening the widest horizon of the possible.
This is why, rather than trying to make predictions and plans in order to bend the future’s fundamental unpredictability, or orient ourselves towards one utopia which predefines today’s values for later generations (see Riel Miller), our focus should shift to developing processes which maintain an openness of futures. Such processes and practices are those that generate and sustain possibilities and potentialities over time, and are able to transform themselves alongside.
This is precisely what democracy, conceptually (5), is all about: not about defining what will be, but to be concerned with establishing the processes by which situated, democratic decisions are and will be able to take place.
Towards sustainable open futures
A prime example of this work of reopening the future by reconciling us with the present is that of the Commons, or ‘commoning’ as I prefer to call it – commoning as the collective work (i.e. practices) to sustain a common good of biophysical, social or cultural, digital or knowledge nature.
By carrying out the work of co-management or stewardship of a commons, we can preserve and grow that commons for the future, which itself nurtures sustainable, open futures for upcoming generations.
Thus, sustainability is about opening the horizon of the future.
Working towards sustainable open futures is about growing the commons as a continuous practice of co-transformation with(in) the world.
Rather than about setting goals, or even utopias, futures lie in transforming our collective processes and practices here and now.
In the arts, two endeavours at least follow this purpose: practice-based research and co-creation/commoning of artistic practices and product(ion)s.
The ‘coproduction’ as label rather than as effective means of production is a prime example thereof.
as in the central concept of feminist epistemology of ‘situated knowledges’ proposed by Donna Haraway (1988).
The original metaphor of Edward Lorenz (1972) is that of the butterfly in Mexico creating a tornado in Texas.
This terminology is my original conceptualization, built on the term of ‘futures in the making’ by sociologist of the future Barbara Adam (with Chris Groves, 2007) expanded by Roberto Poli, to which I add a specific focus on practices, and the speculative approach.
Beyond its – often questionable – current stand in different countries.
Bibliography
Adam, B. & Groves, C. (2007) Future matters: action, knowledge, ethics, Boston: Brill Ahlqvist, T. & Rhisiart, M. (2015) “Emerging pathways for critical futures research: Changing contexts and impacts of social theory”, Futures, 71: 91-104 Appadurai, A. (2013) The future as cultural fact: essays on the global condition, London; New York: Verso Arendt, H. (1998/1958) The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago University Press Bouvier, N. (2009/1963) The Way of the World, translated by R. Marsack, London: Eland Haraway, D. (1988) “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies, 14 (3): 575–599. Miller, R. (2007) “Futures literacy: A hybrid strategic scenario method”, Futures, 39 (2007) 341–362 Rosa, H. (2017) “Dynamic Stabilization, the Triple A. Approach to the Good Life, and the Resonance Conception”, Questions De Communication, 31 (1): 437-456 Poli, R. (2017) Introduction to Anticipation Studies, Springer Int.