MEDPHOTO 5
We Can’t Breathe
In 2000, in the context of the International Biosphere Geosphere Programme, the term “Anthropocene” was introduced to define a new epoch in the geological time scale, where the devastating impact of human activity on the planet is measurable. Despite being rejected by the International Union of Geological Sciences, this term has sparked a global debate leading to radically contradicting responses to the current climate and biospheric destabilisation, ranging from geoengineering and “green” or “sustainable development”, to degrowth.
The most hegemonic of these narratives embodies the central idea which runs through the literature of the Anthropocene: that for this destabilisation, humans are responsible, as a species. But this approach (which even oil giants have instrumentalised to disperse the argument of individual responsibility and the concept of “carbon footprint”) obscures the real causes which have led us to this critical condition and which are not linked to any supposedly intrinsic tendencies of the human species. They are linked, as anthropoecologist Andreas Malm notes, to the economic and political choices of an “infinitesimal fraction of the population of Homo Sapiens”: the owners of the means of production. Indeed, the exclusion of most of the human population from decision-making for the development and control of energy-related technologies, as well as the global division of labor which is a prerequisite for this exclusion, constitute, according to Malm, precisely the condition that bear the true, class-related causes of climate catastrophe, versus treating it like a natural or vaguely anthropogenic phenomenon. This can be vividly illustrated by the fact that, at the moment, the richest 1% of the world’s inhabitants are responsible for 16% of greenhouse gas emissions, a quantity equal to that emitted by the poorest 66% of the planet’s inhabitants, i.e. 5.1 billion people.
The least privileged people on the planet suffer in the most disproportionate way the consequences of the ecocide carried out. Farmers in the countries of the Global South who live in areas affected by floods, tornadoes, or desertification, and end up becoming climate refugees. Indigenous communities forcibly displaced while the forests in which they have lived for centuries are cleared and their land drained by multinational corporations. Slum dwellers who are flooded with piles of toxic e-waste. Workers in conditions of extreme temperatures, or who need to come to contact with pollutants causing a variety of diseases. The victims of settler colonialism operations – operations which (among other things) sweep away agricultural farmlands. But also, citizens of a declining West, who are unable to react in the face of the brutal exploitation by an imposed status quo that prioritises financial profit, while being indifferent to the lives of the Others.
The extraction of the Earth’s mineral reserves, the exploitation of resources and people, the extinction of species, and the displacement of society’s most vulnerable, are but manifestations of the normalized necropolitics that strategically aims to ensure the protection of the privileges of the few and the perpetuation of the established order. This is where the exhibition’s “We Can’t Breathe” intersects with Eric Garner’s “I Can’t Breathe”, since the institutional violence that oppresses the underdog, and the violence that destroys social and biological ecosystems, both emanate from the same source: the patriarchal, racist and colonial core of the capitalist modus operandi. Ηumans, animals, forests, oceans, are heavily impacted by the fatal consequences of the greed that is inherent to the current mode of production. In fact, the whole planet cannot “breathe” any more.
The exhibition “We Can’t Breathe” puts into dialogue photographic series, documentaries, books, and research, that illuminate the dialectics between social and natural ecosystems, that prefigure through visual allegories the possible futures that should be avoided, that give visibility to actions toward climate justice and alternative practices of coexistence, or that tell stories of collective resistance against the straining of the Commons, thus contributing to the development of a contemporary political ecology. Through the selection of these works, MedPhoto also proposes perspectives that stand critically against the Cartesian view that treats nature as a sphere distinct from civilisation, and that consequently tends to represent it as an objectified landscape (a view historically intertwined with the colonial gaze). At the same time, it continues to outline artistic practices that highlight the contradictions underlying the field of representation, while activating our potential to imagine a different and sustainable future for all.
Participating artists:
Forensic Architecture, Ursula Biemann, Sophie Gerrard, Andreas Meladakis, Cristina de Middel & Bruno Morais, Giorgos Moutafis, Oliver Ressler, Penelope Thomaidi
Photobooks by:
Makeda Best, Matt Dunne, Mitch Epstein, Stuart Franklin, Fazal Sheikh
Artistic direction:
Pavlos Fysakis
Curated by:
Dimitris Kechris, Pasqua Vorgia
