Introduction
Based at the University of California at Santa Cruz, The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure brings together artists and scientists to design ecosystem-adaptation projects in critical regions around the world to respond to climate change.
Introduction
Based at the University of California at Santa Cruz, The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure brings together artists and scientists to design ecosystem-adaptation projects in critical regions around the world to respond to climate change.
Global Mapping exhibit, 2013
Like an oncoming storm front, the Force Majeure is a fluid frontier; a frontier of heat moving across the planet; a frontier of water advancing on lands; a frontier of extinctions touching all lives. It is a frontier from which we retreat, yet within which we must also adapt.
Works
The Force Majeure, when framed ecologically, delineates human accelerated global warming produced by the vast industrial processes of extraction and CO2 production.
Works
The Force Majeure, when framed ecologically, delineates human accelerated global warming produced by the vast industrial processes of extraction and CO2 production.
Our motto is Think Globally, Act Globally. We must adapt to the Force Majeure at the scale in which it occurs. We believe that Art and Science working together can provide key insights and solutions. This can be done – if we re-imagine what’s possible. At the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, we’re doing just that. We invite you to join us!
Why do we care?
Because our very survival is at stake. This will affect literally everyone on the planet; hundreds of millions of people already live in low-lying coastal areas - we're talking about something that is going to immiserate millions, perhaps billions of people, cripple our ability to provide food for a rapidly growing population and disrupt the lives and culture of the vast majority of people on the planet.
Why Artists?
Why not artists? Art is the court of last resort – and our best hope. The evidence is overwhelming, and many people are, indeed, overwhelmed. But case after case that we have looked at all over the world, these issues have been looked at locally - we saw a crying need to find ways to talk about the problem at the scale in which it is occurring. That can be terrifying and discouraging, but for us it opens the door to creative possibilities…
The Harrison Studio
The Harrison Studio
The Harrison Studio
Among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison have worked for over forty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development.
The Harrisons’ concept of art embraces a breathtaking range of disciplines. They are historians, diplomats, ecologists, investigators, emissaries and art activists. Their work involves proposing solutions and involves not only public discussion, but community involvement and extensive mapping and documentation of these proposals in an art context. Past projects have focused on watershed restoration, urban renewal, agriculture and forestry issues and urban ecologies. The Harrisons’ visionary projects have, on occasion, led to changes in governmental policy and have expanded dialogue around previously unexplored issues leading to practical implementations variously in the United States and Europe.
Read more about the team →
Five Understandings
First understanding
Nature’s economic system stores the energy that it does not immediately need
mostly in carbon formations
Second understanding
Nature does not charge a profit as do culture’s economic systems
Third understanding
All natural systems are dissipative structures with individuals that form them living,
reproducing then dying with indeterminacy as a norm
Fourth understanding
All natural systems have learned to nest within each other, and, within a context of
symbiosis contribute to collective systems survival, sometimes with abundance
Fifth understanding
Human constructed artifacts particularly legal, political, economic as well as
production and consumption systems seek constancy but are often in violation of the
laws of conservation of energy pointing toward systems entropy
READ THE FULL MANIFESTO →
