#7 – Anthropocene-art 2 GREEN SOUL, The Anthropocene, cultures, imaginaries

Art historian and curator Paul Ardenne is continuing the Green Soul series devised for the Fondation, on cultures and imaginaries in the age of the Anthropocene.

Anthropocene art is fundamentally a creation driven by the idea of renewal. What does it mean to ‘reconnect’? It means rebuilding links, because they have been distended or broken. It means ‘to link up’, a term that refers to ‘religion’ (from the Latin religare), a disposition that is based on faith in something. Faith, on this occasion, in a new contract, the Social Contract of the 21st century, the Socio-Ecological Contract.

In order to establish this contract, and in addition to faith, several other ingredients are needed: voluntarism, energy, a proven optimism for the idea that a future is possible and that it will no longer be that of a contaminated world, and finally stories, a fabula, a ‘storytelling’, as we would say today – a sum of ‘narratives’ that persuasively, stylishly and sensitively support the idea of a future world that will be redeemed, repaired and reinstated in a virtuous trajectory.

This conference, in a nutshell, sets out to define the nature of the ‘narrative’ specific to the anthropocene culture that we will call positive, the one that seeks renewal, in creative fields such as dance, theatre, music, cinema and even comics. It’s all about close contact, gentle sensuality, slowing down the pace of movement, giving back to nature its own music, rebalancing human-non-human relationships and so on, as part of an ecoculture in search of pacification, where the aim is, in the words of green activist and documentary filmmaker Cyril Dion, ‘to replace the current dominant, materialistic and consumerist narrative’.

Paul Ardenne has a degree in History and a doctorate in Arts and Art Sciences. He is a contributor to the journals Art press, Archistorm and INTER-Art actuel, and is the author of several books: Art, l’âge contemporain (1997), L’Art dans son moment politique (2000), L’Image Corps (2001), Un Art contextuel (2002), Art, le présent (2009), Un Art écologique. Création plasticienne et anthropocène (2018), L’Art en joie. Aesthetics of joyful humanity (2023). He is also a novelist and specialist in architecture (Terre Habitée, 2005; La Bonne ville, 2019; Le Boost et le frein – Comment l’humain bâtit au 21e siècle?, 2021…).

As a curator of contemporary art, Paul Ardenne has designed numerous exhibitions, the most recent of which are “Dendromorphies. Creating with trees” (Paris, 2016), “Courants verts. Creating for the environment” (Paris, 2019) and “L’anthropocène et après” (Saint-Denis de la Réunion, 2020). He has produced several programmes on France Culture devoted to art in the age of the Anthropocene (“L’art est l’environnement“, January 2023) and is a regular contributor to the series of programmes The World in Images, on the ARTE television channel.