I wonder who might be roused to climate action by the vandalism of great art.
The question arises — again — because on Sunday a pair of climate activists threw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting in Potsdam.
The protesters said the stunt was designed as a wake-up call in the face of a climate catastrophe. “People are starving, people are freezing, people are dying,” one of the activists said in a video of the incident tweeted by Letzte Generation.
“We are in a climate catastrophe and all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting. You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid because science tells us that we won’t be able to feed our families in 2050,” the protester said. “Does it take mashed potatoes on a painting to make you listen? This painting is not going to be worth anything if we have to fight over food. When will you finally start to listen? When will you finally start to listen and stop business as usual?”
This comes a bit more than a week after another pair of activists threw soup at a Van Gogh painting, with similar motivations and a similar shocked, angry response.
All of this prompts two thoughts:
As an act of persuasion, vandalizing great art is … a shit move. It’s not going to shock the conscience of anybody into suddenly supporting efforts to mitigate climate change. If anything, it’s probably the opposite. Anybody who is on the fence about climate change, policy-wise, probably looks at these folks and thinks: What assholes. I’m not on the fence, I don’t think, but that’s still what I’m thinking.
As an act of despair it makes more sense, but it's still wildly imperfect.
The problem here is, I’m not really sure which one of these categories the art destruction is supposed to fit into.
What are we trying to achieve here?
I won't offer myself up as an expert on persuasion. But it appears to me that the more you alienate people, the less likely your success at getting them to care about what you care about — or to get them to follow the plan of action you think is important. It doesn't mean being non-confrontational, but it does mean choosing your battles wisely. Unless you're going to win the day through utter, brute force, you have to think about how the people who hear your message are going to receive it. You have to think — empathetically, though not necessarily sympathetically — about how they think: Their values, their priorities, what they want for themselves and their families. And you have to think about how to get enough of them (or the right subset of them) on your side to make changes.
Again, I'm having trouble imagining the hypothetical human being who witnesses the attempted destruction of art and feel — reversing their previous actions or inactions — to commit themselves to the climate cause.
At best, the activists seem self-righteously angry1. At worst they seem weird. But they don't really seem like the kind of people you want to make your allies.
Is that because we've given up on persuasion? We humans aren't necessarily good at trying to get other people to see the world differently — we're fighting habits and tribalization and long-held worldviews. It's hard work, and it's often unsuccessful in the short term. This has always been the case, I think, but I also think that after Donald Trump's election in 2016, a number of folks on the left said to themselves: "Why even try?" (Folks on the right seem interested in merely overpowering their rivals, which is a scarier version of the same issue.) It's easier to think of the folks on the other side as bad guys — irrevocably so — than as fellow citizens whose cooperation or assent is probably necessary to achieve the things you want to achieve.
Then again, sometimes injustices loom so large that the only thing left is to cry out against the madness.
I'm thinking of a few folks here. I'm thinking of the monks in Vietnam who set themselves ablaze during the American war there — and of the climate activst who did the same not so long ago in Washington D.C. I can read their actions as a desperate attempt to shock the consciences of survivors in the face of a mad and seemingly unalterable situation. I read them as acts of despair, a small act of self-destruction in the face of some larger calamity, a belief that even if things return to the right path it won't happen without some horrific act of self-negation. How can we go on living this way? I won't.
Maybe the art vandals belong in the second category. I started out writing this willing to believe that they are. But I'm not convincing myself. Because the activists don't seem to have sacrificed much, aside maybe from a few days of their lives spent in jail. Instead, they've given us performance. It feels hollow.
There is another category I haven't considered yet, which is that the vandalism is an act of rebellion and resistance. The art is not causing climate change -- it is not even really a good symbol of the forces that are perpetuating climate change. Paintings of sunflowers and water lilies?2 Sure.
If you're going to commit small acts of vandalism, maybe do it against the real villains. I have a friend who sometimes talks about being ready to chuck everything and go blow up some pipelines. I sincerely hope — for a variety of reasons — that they don't, but at least a pipeline is a target that makes sense. Kim Stanley Robinson's how-to-fight-climate-change novel, The Ministry for the Future, hints that eco-terrorism might be a necessary part of reversing course, but the targets in that book are businesses and activities that generate large amounts of carbon emissions — not art.
Ultimately, I believe the art vandals were trying to persuade. I believe that because they told us so: "When will you finally start to listen? When will you finally start to listen and stop business as usual?” That's the cry of somebody trying to make change.
But again, nobody's changing their mind. Art vandalism is bad as persuasion, bad as an act of despair, bad as an act of resistance. It certainly is noisy, however.
Which, understandable.
OK, the Monet in this instance wasn't a water lily, honestly, but that's what you think of when you think Monet.
I appreciate your measured approach here, and I understand it. These kids did get to me, and I do think protests should be messy. That being said I do agree that it *technically* doesn't do anything. But the price of artwork—close to 200 hundred million for a Warhol?? Tens of millions for Frida? I don't know what they're worth, but I can understand going after rich people's favorite things.