Jordan’s piece depicts 28,000 42-gallon oil barrels, which is equivalent to 2 minutes of oil consumption in the United States and equals the flow of a medium-sized river. The collection on
allows the viewer to zoom into the image and see the detail of each print that Jordan has arranged on the digital canvas.
This artwork is layered with meaning with regards to American consumption, energy extraction, and how the Anthropocene manifests in everyday life. Jordan’s choice to depict a statistic about oil consumption in the U.S. is significant because fossil fuels have been instrumental in bolstering Western economies and kickstarting industrialization. American prosperity, as well as the American ecological footprint, is found specifically in our use and need for oil. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels surpass 400ppm (Steffen et al. 618), climate science points toward fossil fuel consumption as a major cause for our geological transition into the Anthropocene.
What’s particularly fascinating about this image is that the arrangement of the prints reveal that the American economy and lifestyle are centered on oil. The statistic itself shows our dependency on oil, yet Jordan emphasizes this idea by arranging the oil drums in a multitude of concentric circles that fade into blackness, demonstrating our immense appetite for fossil fuels and the conventional industry belief that energy extraction can continue infinitely. At the center of the artwork is the bottom of an oil drum speckled with rust, perhaps representing the fact that even as oil deteriorates as the world’s primary energy supply, the U.S. is still fixated on its consumption.
Jordan’s hauntingly beautiful mosaic contributes to a greater understanding of the scale of the Anthropocene. As a global phenomenon, the extent of human action can sometimes be unfathomable. Especially to the average American who does not have an extensive knowledge of climate science, the Anthropocene can be an alienating concept because it represents an astronomical amount of environmental degradation. When speaking about
Running the Numbers, Jordan states that he hopes to "raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming"
(Jordan, "About Running the Numbers"). By creating a compelling visual representation for one aspect of our environmental impact, Jordan successfully leads the viewer to understand the scale and causes of the Anthropocene, while also provoking self-reflection on how our own actions have contributed to this larger picture.
The image above is one from
Midway; all that is left of the albatross in the photograph is its feathers, its skull, and the plastics that brought about its death. In terms of Jordan’s history in photography, this collection represents another unusual place where Jordan has found color and pattern.
This image demonstrates the permanence of human action as well as the scale of the environmental consequences of consumerism and mass production. As the photograph shows in graphic detail, even as the bird's body decomposes, the plastics inside of it remain. This photograph requires the reader to look past the gore and decay to recognize that the natural world deteriorates in unnatural ways because of the permanent effects of human action. The plastics in the photograph, a symbol for mass consumption and consumerism, have a lifespan that exceeds that of the albatross by many years and will remain on the island as a mark of human invasion in the environment. Just as the plastics have created a permanent consequence, the death of a majestic bird, so has human action resulted in a permanent planetary change, the Anthropocene.
Although this photograph depicts the harm to fragile ecosystems in one isolated case, it indirectly represents the extent of human-environmental impact throughout the world. The cluster of islands that make up Midway Atoll lie in the Pacific Ocean 2,000 miles away from the nearest continent, meaning that the plastics with which the birds have been poisoned traveled 2,000 miles or more to get to the islands. Through the location of these photographs, Jordan demonstrates the scale of the Anthropocene in terms of distance; the Anthropocene is not limited to our immediate environments, but instead, extends thousands of miles from the place where we first disposed of that plastic bottle cap. The
Midway collection emphasizes the globality of the Anthropocene in a dimension that can be difficult to comprehend, leading the viewer to understand more fully the reach of human impact on the environment.
On
Midway, Jordan states that “[t]hese birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth”
(Jordan, "About Midway"). Jordan suggests that just as the wastes of mass consumption have become toxic to thousands of albatrosses, so has consumerism and overproduction become toxic to humanity. Therefore, Jordan’s work prompts the viewer to consider how their own actions have contributed in part to environmental degradation and global climate change.
“[t]hese birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth.”
The Future of the Anthropocene
In his TED talk, Jordan expressed his concern with current American culture and our tendency to be desensitized to destruction. Jordan stated that he aims to speak through his art with “a universal visual language that can be felt”
(TED) in order to express important environmental concerns to his audience. Jordan’s artwork serves as a translation for immense statistics and interactions of the natural world, transforming them into a visual representation that the average viewer can understand without extensive climate knowledge.
Jordan refrains from providing a clear solution for any of the environmental problems that he depicts. However, according to artist and educator Kayla Anderson, art does not need to provide a clear-cut solution for the issues it reveals. Anderson states that the purpose of Anthropocene art is “not to prescribe concrete single-track solutions, but to broaden perspectives on how the world is and how it could be in light of the Anthropocene”
(338). In fact, art that proposes an oversimplified solution to environmental problems is, in a way, inherently anthropocentric because it assumes that humans currently have the means to “fix” incredibly complex issues. Anderson argues that art of the Anthropocene should
stimulate critical thinking about the problems that the Anthropocene represents, not
simulate actions which perpetuate the notion of human control over the earth
(339).
Therefore, Anderson’s understanding of the purpose of Anthropocene art fits with Jordan’s intention for creating his artworks. Just as Anderson recognizes the Anthropocene as a “crisis of critical thinking”
(339), Jordan states that his art reflects his fear that we as a society have “lost our sense of outrage”
(TED). Art, therefore, is the means through which ideas evoke outrage and consequently foster engaged thought. As Jordan's collections illustrate, the consequences of indifference are, quite literally, staring us in the face; our continued impact on the environment can no longer be ignored.
As the inhabitants of the Anthropocene, art is imperative to understanding our place in this new geological epoch. Through works like Jordan’s, we can attribute real meaning and consequences to global capitalism, consumerism, and indifference toward the environment. Perhaps once we establish a disconnect between current Western economic goals and the limits of the Earth System, we can begin to address what the future of the Anthropocene will be.
Sources
Anderson, Kayla. “Ethics, Ecology, and the Future: Art and Design Face the Anthropocene.” Leonardo, vol. 48, no. 4, Aug. 2015, pp. 338–47.Bonneuil, Christophe, and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. “Phagocene: Consuming the Planet.”
The Shock of the Anthropocene. Fernbach, David ed., Verso, 2016, Brooklyn, NY.
"Chris Jordan: Turning powerful stats into art." Youtube, uploaded by TED, 23 June 2008.Guay, Abigail. “The Art of Waste: The Photography of Chris Jordan” ARCADE, 14 July 2014. Accessed 25 Oct. 2017.Jordan, Chris. E-Waste, New Orleans. 2005, photograph, ChrisJordan.comJordan, Chris. Midway. 2009, photograph, ChrisJordan.com.Jordan, Chris. Oil Barrels. 2008, print, ChrisJordan.com.Lavars, Nick. “Interview: Environmental Artist Chris Jordan Talks Sustainability.” News Atlas, 19 Feb. 2014. Accessed 25 Oct. 2017."Portrait of Chris Jordan." ChrisJordan.com, n.d. Accessed 1 Dec. 2017.Steffen, Will et al. “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?” Royal Swedish Academy of Science, vol. 36, no. 8, 2007, pp. 614-621.
Sullivan, Robert. “When Did the End Begin?” Science of Us, New York Magazine, 18 June 2015. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017 “The Age of Humans: Evolutionary Perspectives on the Anthropocene.” The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program, 13 Oct. 2016. Accessed 18 Oct. 2017.