Artist/Non-artist as Caretaker

We live in a new condition of the Earth. The world is not in a transition or crisis; what we face now is a fragile and finite Earth. If in modernity Nature = non-art, perhaps, when some artists collapse into non-art, it means both an exit from modernity and a new possibility of taking care of our world.

»Guardianship, care – to curate is to care for. We are the curators of a gigantic museum of non-art in which we have found ourselves, a spontaneous museum of hyperobjects.* The very nature of democracy and society is thrown into question: Whom does it contain? Only humans? Whom, if any, can it exclude? The atomic priesthood would prevent others from knowing the truth. The attempt to care for hyperobjects and for their distant future guardians will strikingly change how humans think about themselves and their relationships with nonhumans. This change will be a symptom of a gradually emerging ecological theory and practice that includes social policy, ethics, spirituality, and art, as well as science.«
– Timothy Morton

* Hyperobjects – global warming is perhaps the most imaginative example of what Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject: entities of so vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what the thing is in the first place.