Art as Life in the Age of the Anthropocene

By Jon Keppel

Given that we are in the Anthropocene, a time when human influence is percolating at a global level with the potential to extend further out into the cosmos (as physicist David Deutsch has intimated about the power of knowledge), now is a pivotal time to reflect on the nature by which we each and collectively help to bring the world into being. Note here that I feel we are not all-powerful masters of the universe and that humbleness and gratitude need to be kept in play in order to find an equilibrium. What I have found as an artist and developing information professional, is that art can be an access point by which we come to understand the limitlessness and randomness of the universe (or multiverse). Just as much however and perhaps more efficaciously is its potential and tendency towards order and union as a way of making sense of the world, helping to craft presence in the world. The word cosmos after all means order. If we can be at peace with the spark of imagination that is at the heart of the artistic impulse and perhaps all extant reality then I think we can find a way in which to positively impact the world of which we are so indelibly a part of and simul-instantly living through.

I have told various versions of this conception through YouTube videos, Instagram posts and blog posts and I continue here because the formulation and transmission of this conception is a part of the work I do as an artist and developing information professional. I have come to this understanding through following the development of Western fine art. The fruits of that research have produced an understanding that art and life have merged. Perhaps it is simply a revealing of a truth that has always been around, nevertheless I think this realization has the power to transform how we think about not only art, but life itself, for our times and future times. To plainly describe it, this view posits that we are all artists in a way and all the world is art, including ourselves. As the Anthropocene intimates we have the power to influence the creation and co-creation of not only ourselves but the planet and beyond.

This should be of interest to anyone interested in contemporary art but also anyone interested in the society and culture of our times. This coming together of art and life holds with it, I feel, a potential for profound collective healing and pronounced individual thriving. I have asked myself how far into it all should I go with a post like this to Medium? Will people read it? Should I write a book? Should I keep doing more and more YouTube videos, Instagram posts, blog posts and so on? And the answer that comes to mind is simply: yes. I should be doing all of these things and more to get the purpose and immense power of this message across to folks as much as possible because it can truly educate us in the ways by which we can help to positively impact the further creation of creation.

I have gone through the history of how this merging of art and life has been revealed in Western fine art in previous writings. To sum it up from time immemorial paintings and sculptures were made from the very first times of cave dwelling all the way up to a turning point at the beginning of last century. In 1917, a man named Marcel Duchamp flipped things albeit in a humorous way so that all material reality in a way could be read and understood as art. He did this notably by entering a commonplace, premanufactured urinal into an exhibition for consideration as art. His choice helped to make it into art. In a sense though this process helped to reveal that any object is already art related to awareness and choice. It is a way of thinking or approaching it conceptually that brings the art in all things to life. Art in the fine art sense stemming firstly from the West has completely changed from that time on morphing into conceptual terrain and more recently into sheer existence itself.

Roughly around the turn of the 21st century a genre of what had now become a global art world of context and institutionalization something arose called relational aesthetics. A prominent example of this period of development of art is made clear by the shared actions of a man named Rirkrit Tiravanija. The piece so to speak was called Untitled (Free) and consisted of the artist making Thai food, serving it to others in the context of an art site, a gallery, and simply eating the food together. In other words, the eating of a meal had become art, the mundane and the fine had merged completely as a fundamental lived action of sustenance. This I feel is a key moment in which art history transcended historicity merging deeds in life with the full power of fine art.

Countless other examples arose from the time of Duchamp up until the moment of Tiravanija. Most notably there was Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and Allan Kaprow’s Happenings in the 1960’s thereby connecting the dots of one turn of the century to the next. The work I do (in part represented by this writing) picks up at the point most recently where we ask if it is true that art and life have merged completely or that perhaps more accurately it has been revealed that art and life were always one underneath all of the separate instantiations that we collectively in the West pointed our attention to in order to have a critical conversation about what art is, then what does that mean for living our lives? The work I am doing asks if art and life have merged then what next? What do we do with that information? How do we go about living our lives with such information? A simple way to explain it is that I have looked into the simultaneous rise of mindfulness in the West and have come to understand it as a contemporary art practice in light of the historical developments that have transpired in Western fine art. This revelation that I speak of which is resonating with our conception of the Anthropocene and for example global warming due to human activity, just might be able to positively transform us and our world. What if we choose to see ourselves, each other and the world as art?

As in mindfulness, the idea of presence and being present is extraordinarily important as it, and this is key I feel, relates to the presence and present of the contemporary state of the world itself, the bigger-than-us aspect of extant reality that is relevant to our entire species and is manifest in the current events and innovations of our time. I have been describing this mindset as something I am calling the artistic attitude but ultimately the mantle or verbiage of art itself can be let go of at some point if it stands to make the understanding more readily available and comfortable for all human beings (in other words we could look at the accumulation of, existence with and application of knowledge as a way of understanding this dynamic just as much as calling it art).

It is in a manner of science and art that I have been working on this conception where I essentially develop practices in my own life and with my own mind and sense of presence. I do this safely and intentionally in the pursuit of art as wellness through primarily reading and meditation (along with something I am calling “crafting” that posits positive ways in which to enhance life through manifesting techniques involving imagination and gratitude). I truly believe that art in its conventional sense along with this more revelatory conception can help us to heal as a people from the collective trauma of being alive and start to do the lifework that we have available to us at the very most fundamental levels of being human.

I do not want to go too in depth with this for this particular Medium post. I simply want to record its efficacy and share it above all with all of you dear readers so that you may benefit from its potential. We are affecting animal populations as we have known for years, forests, oceans and now the planet itself. My call to action is that we can come to know ourselves as art and artists (or if you prefer simply creators and creation) and help the world by helping ourselves as the Buddhist monk Mingyur Rinpoche has stated. Not in a strictly self-serving way but in a transcendent and transforming way. We are all artists in that we are all creating all of the time simply by being alive. With each breath we help bring the world into being. It is time now to unlock the true potential of art to come to our aid in this time of global unrest.

Art as the craft of life can help us save ourselves by making us more ourselves than we have ever been before. We are the world, truly. We have always been. Now is a way of awakening to the promise of our nature to prosper. May we learn to listen and pay attention in conjunction with our creating. We are each the child for whom this world is disappearing. Only our imaginations will save us. Only our boundless creativity and curious nature will heal our troubling times and act as a balm for the inherent suffering of life and pain that arises from misunderstanding, ignorance, greed and selfishness. As we become more present and illuminate our innate creativity and goodness I feel, I know that we will be able to help steward this world into brighter times even if for no other reason than for our own dignity. We are crafting and co-crafting at a global level now. But it starts with us as individuals. May we craft and co-craft with kindness, gentleness, peacefulness, hope and resolve.

Thank you for reading this.

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