The interconnected global challenges we face today clearly indicate that we are living in a time of profound crisis and a major civilizational shift that is related to the transformation of our entire planetary system. According to the pioneers of ecological art, husband and wife Helen and Newton Harrison, the processes of entropy that we have set in motion during millennia of human civilization are culminating in most terrestrial ecosystems today in the form of an unpredictable and unavoidable force, for which the Harrisons have borrowed the legal term “Force Majeure,” or higher power. In their Manifesto for the 21st Century, they write that the forces that make up Force Majeure were unleashed by the rise in the average temperature of the climate system, which was caused by “massive industrial processes of extraction, production and consumption that have reduced forests and depleted topsoil, that have vastly reduced the productivity of the oceans, while causing enormous chemical pollution in the atmosphere, on land and in the waters…”
Force Majeure is like an approaching storm front, a fluid boundary—a boundary of heat moving across the planet, a boundary of water in an approaching ocean facing the earth. It is a boundary from which we are forced to retreat, but within which we must also adapt and learn to live. The impact of the climate crisis on planetary systems has accelerated dramatically over the past century, and especially over the past twenty-five years. Research by biologist Paul R. Ehrlich and others has revealed that the sixth mass extinction, which is occurring today, is occurring many times faster than similar transitions in the past. Ehrlich estimates that 5 to 6 million species, or 50% of the species alive today, will be lost in the next 50 to 100 years. Dramatic and catastrophic environmental change is inevitable, according to the Harrisons, but their own work shows that Force Majeure represents a situation that is open to our creativity and mediation that can lead to problem-solving. They argue that if we can reduce the projected loss of species from 50% to 20-30%, or 3 million species, over the next 50 to 100 years, ecological regeneration may still be possible.
To this end, in 2009 they founded the Center for the Study of Force Majeure at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which brings together artists, scientists, ecologists, engineers, planners, and visionaries to jointly design large-scale ecological adaptation systems in areas around the world that are now approaching a critical tipping point due to the climate crisis, to help alleviate the problems we face today and to whose pressures we will be particularly exposed in the years to come. Climate change is narrowing the gap between global ecology and human ecology, and only if we succeed in ensuring the well-being of the global system can we support and stimulate the well-being of human society. A truly effective creative response to climate change, as the Center for the Study of Force Majeure is coming up with, will inevitably transform all of human society, according to the Harrisons.
We seem to be in the midst of one of those dramatic shifts in evolution that always occur through major crises and result in new forms of creativity. Humanity has never faced such a far-reaching transformation in the past. It will mean a fundamental change in our story, our relationship to the world, our understanding of ourselves, including how we understand society and technology. We are entering a changing and unpredictable world in which we can no longer rely on our detached abstractions, coupled with the idea of controlling and mastering reality. We are increasingly opening up to the understanding that the essence of our lives – from the micro level to the most distant dimensions of the universe – is relationships. According to Charles Eisenstein, climate change sends us an important message: we and the Earth (and also us and the cosmos) are one. Everything we do to the world, we do to ourselves.
This moves us from the story of the isolated self in a hostile universe to a story of coexistence, from the story of control and boundless exploitation of nature to a story of cooperation, mutual sharing, symbiosis and care. In this sense, the Harrisons in their project Peninsula Europe (2002-2009) present Europe as a potential multiple eco-cultural entity, or rather as an eco-cultural biome, which could be capable of cooperating as a single whole. The Harrisons argue that human-made systems, which today violate the laws of conservation of energy, must seek lessons in the basic principles of the functioning of natural systems. Just as natural systems, human systems must learn to nest within each other and, through mutual symbiosis, contribute to a collective system of survival. Helena and Newton Harrison reformulate civilization as a biome that operates in accordance with the laws of conservation of energy and ecological exchange and is capable of specifically tuning into the web of life.
George Zemanek
MANIFESTO FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Helena and Newton Harrison
We, the Harrison Studio, believe that
Just like others, although differently,
That a series of events occurred –
Beginning with the time of Gilgamesh and what came before it,
Starting with agriculture and the first genetic manipulation,
Starting with livestock culture and other genetic manipulation,
Starting with globalization six thousand years ago
First via the Salt Trail and a little later via the Silk Road
And later and later...
Especially the scientific revolution shaped by Descartes
And modernity, which re-created the cultural landscape
And in doing so, she deconstructed nature,
From the Industrial Revolution to the Present
– Until suddenly a new power became apparent.
We reshape its legal meaning ecologically
And we call it Force Majeure.
We, the Harrison Studio, claim,
as others do it somewhat differently,
That a higher power, understood ecologically,
It determines the results on the ground in physical terms.
Everything we have created in the global landscape,
It shapes the conditions that have accelerated global warming,
Which works in harmony
With massive industrial processes of extraction, production and consumption,
Which reduced forests and depleted topsoil,
Which have greatly reduced the productivity of the oceans,
While they cause enormous chemical pollution in the atmosphere
On land and in the waters,
Which all together forms this higher power.
We, the Harrison Studio, are grateful
For the opportunity to engage in this courageous conversation,
Whose discourse is generally
It concerns time, money, power, law, sex, politics,
Personal well-being and survival
In many combinations and recombinations,
Which deal with social injustice
And somewhat less ecosystem injustice.
This discourse points to human consciousness
Which constantly takes care of itself
While it paid little attention to what was outside of it,
Which caused the real value to be replaced with an irrelevant value,
When human creativity creates technology,
Who, although they are useful to many, do not seem to like what they themselves are not.
And sometimes it happens that their original intention is overturned.
This is a casual conversation, heading towards green,
Conversations about how the industry and people think
About doing good by doing the right things,
With green roofs, green cars,
Green production processes,
Green transformations of matter
Green production of all kinds,
The expanding green markets,
Through green in everyday life
within the framework of sustainability.
We, the Harrison Studio, claim
Like others, not yet very numerous,
That in the face of many turning points
Which have occurred and which are occurring,
From CO2 and methane emissions to nitrates, nitrites
And more and more,
All this effort and all this work,
Altruistic from the best people,
Greedy and selfish from the worst of people,
It is better to do than not to do,
But in the overall balance, it is not enough,
Infinitely is not enough.
Force majeure, as is evident even now,
It generates rising ocean levels,
Accelerates the depletion of ocean food chains,
It forces glaciers and snowpacks to melt,
It creates floods and droughts on a continental scale,
Which has consequences for rivers,
As they flow through Asia from the Tibetan Plateau
And it is a reality for many areas of both Americas.
Its consequences for Peninsular Europe are unfortunate,
The numbers are overwhelming.
They reveal the predicted trajectory of the drought that will progress
From Portugal to the southern parts of Germany and beyond,
Reduction of 2.4 million square kilometers of agricultural land,
Which today feeds more than 450 million Europeans, up by almost a third in fifty years.
The population will grow, the food supply will decrease,
The waters will rise,
People will have to move up.
The rich will continue to do well,
But that won't apply to the middle class.
And the devastating impact this situation will have on the poor.
We, the Harrison Studio, conclude,
that a counterforce to this trend is available,
but only if it is implemented within the next fifty years.
Civil society will experience confusion and collapse in many places
And together with ecosystems
will experience both restlessness and moments of relief.
The counterforce consists of the following understandings,
Which are waiting to be internalized and then realized:
First understanding
Nature's economic system stores energy that is not immediately needed, mostly in carbon formations.
Second understanding
Nature does not charge a profit as the economic systems of culture do.
Third understanding
All natural systems are dissipative structures with individuals shaping them by living, reproducing, and then dying, structures where uncertainty is the norm.
Fourth understanding
All natural systems have learned to nest within each other and, in the context of symbiosis, contribute to the collective survival system, sometimes in excess.
Fifth understanding
Human-made artifacts – especially legal, political, economic, as well as production and consumption systems – strive for permanence, but they often violate the laws of conservation of energy, leading to entropy of the systems.
When the first four understandings are internalized and integrated into all parts of the fifth understanding, a transformation can occur that opens up avenues for human-made systems to relinquish their autonomy and embrace limitations. This acceptance will allow for processes of nesting within nesting that allow natural and human modes of invention, which are currently so opposed, to come together in a cooperative manner.
The counterforce we propose will allow
- Culturally generated acceleration of adaptive behavior on a large scale
- Operating in parallel to the intensifying climate caused by human activity
- Setting the scope for adaptation strategies that will facilitate migration
- of our own kind
- Even those who are not us
- And who are equally at risk of mass extinction with us,
- To zones of greater safety
- Attunement to a higher power and, over time, alignment with it.
(From the English original by Helena and Newton Harrison, “A Manifesto for the 21st Century”
translated by Jiří Zemánek; see: http://theharrisonstudio.net/a-manifesto-for-the-21st-century)