The Age of Now: Anthropocene Artist Spotlight — Louie Psihoyos
The Age of Now:
If you'd grown up watching Flipper, you'd care about the sea, too. Dubuque-borne Psihoyos is a Greek-American photographer and filmmaker who has been using his platform to reach audiences worldwide. Psihoyos cites Flipper, the Television show, as a source of inspiration and passion for the oceans, Psihoyos has taken drastic measures to ensure that his opinion on the environmental disaster humanity faces is heard. Debuting for National Geographic in 1986, Psihoyos is both prolific and venerated for his work as a photojournalist and filmmaker — winning an Oscar among 20 other awards, and several other nominations. In his work, Psihoyos stresses the intersection between daily life and ecological crisis.
And ecological crisis is exactly our business. In an age where steadily increasing expansion has run the earth to its limits, humans currently live an age called the anthropocene, and Psihoyos says the anthropocene equals action.
The Anthropocene?
According to Dr. Boris Worm, "the anthropocene means that what happens to this planet is now in our own hands," (Psihoyos). Certainly, humanity has a quite a bit of cleaning up after itself to do, but that's not quite the definition of the anthropocene we are looking for. What does Worm's definition mean when it's more refined and pointed? Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz provide some insight as to what Worm might be trying to tell us in The Cove. In their novel, The Shock of the Anthropocene, Bonneuil and Fressoz redefine the anthropocene in a more socioanalytical perspective. The polemocene, they say, is an era since 1750 where humanity has been knowingly causing and "resisting the deterioration of Earth" (Bonneuil & Fressoz, 458).Humanity is facing an ecological crisis. This undeniable truth must be faced now, because if we don't act in the present, there might not be anything left for the future generations to save. As Alan Weisman reminds readers in The World Without Us, ecological conditions are changing frighteningly rapidly, with sea levels rising nearly an inch a year (Weisman 28). It's clear is necessary now.
The anthropocene is much more than the literal ecological consequences of our actions. It's about the "national myth of the frontier" William Cronon talks about in his argument, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature" — the delusion that the earth still has something more to offer us, something left for us to extract, when in reality she has nothing left to give (Cronon, 7). The anthropocene is on an elementary level social, and that is why art is necessary to contextualize and personalize such a momentous and unprecedented experience.
And Art Helps, How Exactly?
It's difficult to imagine how, exactly, art fits into the scheme of our dying planet. But it seems, truly, that Louie Psihoyos is on the right path with his avenue of engagement.
Because if anything, anthropocene art should serve two purposes — first, it should analyze how daily routine and ecological nightmares converge. Second, it should force viewers to contemplate their relationship to nature and how we can better serve it
As an extension, then, anthropocene art is inherently ecological. As Cheryll Glotfelty simply puts in "Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis,” "ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment," (Glotfelty). And in juxtaposing these two, anthropocene artists allow their art to become a transit for monumental scales to be boiled down to personal beliefs and ideals.
Ecology's Danny Ocean
In 2009, Louie Psihoyos debuted his first full-length film entitled, The Cove. Assembling a crew of film experts, logistics specialists, and champion-level free-divers in order to infiltrate and bust a Japanese dolphin-killing operation responsible for the deaths of over 23,000 dolphins a year. By setting up cameras, microphones, and other high-tech equipment up in this secret Japanese cove, Psihoyos and crew were able to make waves in the international animal rights community. Psihoyos brought the fishery responsible for the massacre of dolphins to light, and in doing so, reached audiences worldwide.Furthermore, Psihoyos's work here reminds viewers of activities that prolong the devastation of marine populations. By giving patronage to institutions like SeaWorld, Zoos, and some Museums, we undermine the progress that those who are fighting for cetaecean (the scientific family including whales and dolphins) rights have gained. Dolphins, orca whales, and other species kept in captivity often suffer in anxiety-driven madness for the entirety of their lives, former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry states.
Highly present in this film is a sense of urgency for the environment. Even the trailer is emphatically action-based. With so much focus on action, Louie Psihoyos actually loses a bit of his intended rhetorical effect. In The Cove, Psihoyos actually alienates viewers slightly by making, essentially, himself and Ric O'Barry the art in this film. There's actually a scene where O'Barry enters, uninvited, to international whaling delegations with raw footage of the massacre at the cove playing via a screen attached to his chest. Even the trailer focuses on the actions of a small group of people, rather than on a larger, human level.
Tackling the Anthropocene Head-On
Psihoyos's second feature film, Racing Extinction, was focused on several experts' efforts around the world to spread awareness about the anthropocene and evoke ecological action.By the end of the movie, Louie has established this: The anthropocene is now, and ecological habitats will be irreparably damaged unless humanity changes its course for the better. By the end of the movie, Louie's grand stunt is to take a massive car-mounted projector and display images with green messages on famous buildings — the Empire State Building, for example, is one monument that gets illuminated.
Soon enough, the streets were packed with onlookers viewing Psihoyos's anthropocene exhibit. And in doing so, Psihoyos tidies up the anthropocene as an idea and places it directly in our laps. Not much more can be asked of an anthropocene artist who literally, in the film asks viewers, "We have many many ways to fix this problem. The question is are we going to do it fast enough?"
Here, Psihoyos's work fits the definition for anthropocene art to a T. By literally telling onlookers, "don't eat meat," "carpool," and other simple commands that could add to a large difference if enough people were to get on board with it, Psihoyos engages both personally and on a grand-scale with his audience. In his light shows, he spotlights endangered and extinct animals as well, showing the connections that human actions share with the ecology.
