COP 21 and the Crisis of Human Scale in Art

A November 2015 article in artpress (issue 427, pp. 43-49) reexamines relational aesthetics and concepts like 'radicant' and 'alter-modern' in light of the upcoming UN climate change conference (COP 21) in Paris and the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene. The piece argues that contemporary art practices must confront the crisis of human scale—the mismatch between individual human experience and the planetary scale of environmental change. It suggests that relational aesthetics, which focus on micro-social interactions, may need to evolve to address macro-ecological challenges. The article references Nicolas Bourriaud's notion of the 'radicant' (a rootless, adaptive form of art) and the 'alter-modern' as frameworks for rethinking art's role in an era of global ecological crisis. The author calls for a redefinition of aesthetic practices to engage with the immense temporal and spatial scales of climate change, moving beyond human-centered perspectives.