Resilience Online Exhibition

The inspiration for the Resilience Art Call comes from an article posted on the MAHB website:
Resilience, the Global Challenge and the Human Predicament
by Michael Lerner 

[…] We face a perfect storm of environmental, social, technological, economic, geopolitical, and other global stressors. These global stressors interact in unpredictable ways. The pace of future shocks is increasing.
The prospect for civilizational collapse is real. We need to build meaningful resilience. […]

Michael Lerner is president and co-founder of Commonweal, a 43-year-old nonprofit center in Bolinas, California, with programs in health and healing, education and the arts,
and environment and justice. 

Artists

Deborah Alastra, Erica Atreya, Claude Benzrihem, Kristine Diekman, Cynthia Fusillo, Michele Guieu, Pascal Ken, Sailev, Ivan Sigg, Marcela Villaseñor, Lotte Van De Walle

.

Exhibition

“The Weight” 2020

Digital photograph

Ganjia, Gansu, China
2020
  • Marcela Villaseñor

Resilience

Oil on canvas

Every year more than a million wildebeests take on a perilous trek from the Serengeti to the Maasai Mara in a search for water and grazing lands. It is one of the largest overland migration in the world and one of the deadliest, a cycle of self-renewal and an incredible display of resilience, Nature’s design principle. Nature explores all possibilities for life and builds in mechanisms to ensure things survive. So much we have to learn for ourselves.
2020
  • Sailev

Finding Beauty in Pain

Manipulated digital photograph

2020
  • Erica Atreya

Resilience – What do we need?

Gouache on wood
7.5" diameter

2020
  • Lotte Van De Walle

Apprivoiser les Monstres / Taming the Monsters

Digital image

Les mutations homme-animal génèrent des monstruosités, mais c’est réversible : nous portons des masques à bec de canard !
Pauvres canards.

Human-animal mutations generate monstrosities, but it’s reversible: we wear duck-billed masks!
Poor ducks.
2020
  • Claude Benzrihem

Résilience Concrète / Actual Resilience

Digital Photograph

2020
  • Claude Benzrihem

The firebird is cycling

Digital painting

Resilience = overcoming trauma.
With children and artists of Kobe & with “Le petit Ney” in Paris, we decided to overcome several traumas: confinement, absence of vacations in the council houses, cancellation of the Japanese Olympics. I animated with Tagtool these drawings of Japanese children and then projected them on a building in the 18th district of Paris.

Résilience = triompher des traumatismes.
Avec les enfants et les artistes de Kōbe ainsi qu’avec « Le petit Ney » à Paris, nous avons décidé de dépasser plusieurs traumatismes : le confinement, l’absence de vacances dans les cités, l’annulation des JO de Tokyo. J’ai animé avec Tagtool ces dessins d’enfants japonais puis les ai Projetés sur une cité du 18ème arrdt de Paris.
2020
  • Ivan Sigg

Maki & Makiko zoo

Original puppets of these two artists of Kōbe and my digital animated paintings

Resilience = overcoming trauma.
With children and artists of Kobe & with “Le petit Ney” in Paris, we decided to overcome several traumas: confinement, absence of vacations in the council houses, cancellation of the Japanese Olympics. I animated with Tagtool these drawings of Japanese children and then projected them on a building in the 18th district of Paris.

Résilience = triompher des traumatismes.
Avec les enfants et les artistes de Kōbe ainsi qu’avec « Le petit Ney » à Paris, nous avons décidé de dépasser plusieurs traumatismes : le confinement, l’absence de vacances dans les cités, l’annulation des JO de Tokyo. J’ai animé avec Tagtool ces dessins d’enfants japonais puis les ai Projetés sur une cité du 18ème arrdt de Paris.
2020
  • Ivan Sigg

Resilience 2020

Collage – acrylic turquoise on an old book:
“Pensées” de Pascal (“Thoughts from Blaise Pascal), French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, moralist and theologian.
18×22 cm

Resilience is a long way from home. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.
(Chinese: 千里之行,始於足下; pinyin: Qiānlǐ zhī xíng, shǐyú zú xià; lit.: ‘A journey of a thousand Chinese miles (li) starts beneath one’s feet’)
2020
  • Pascal Ken

Listen deeply. World Listening Day.

Digital photograph

This majestic ash tree is fighting to survive the ash borer which is decimating ash trees across our country. Vanishing forests. Stand strong, old friend. We hear you.
2020
  • Kristine Diekman

Are We Disappearing – A Human Predicament?

Figure: 173cm x 56cm paper, dirt, mixed media.

“We need to survive these future shocks- up to and including civilizational collapse- if we are to build a greener and more just world on the other side.”
Michael Lerner
2020
  • Cynthia Fusillo

Switchpoint

I believe it’s going to be difficult to change the way we live if we do not understand the Human Predicament.

[…] This human predicament goes by many names. The global challenge. The global problematique. Limits to growth. The end of the world as we know it. The prospect for civilizational collapse. All refer to the perfect storm of global biosphere and societal stressors interacting in complex and unpredictable ways.

Environmental stressors include:
– Climate change, sea-level rise, and changing weather
– Biodiversity loss at 10,000 times the normal level
– Toxification of all life, insect armageddon
– Ocean acidification, dead zones, plastics, and fish and plankton depletion
– Declining and polluted fresh water sources
– Depleted top soils
– Vanishing forests and many more
Social stressors include:
– Poverty, racism, and injustice
– Unsustainable economic growth and global debt
– Vulnerable financial systems, supply chains, and power grids
– Population overshoot, refugee migrations, and resource competition
– Uncontrolled technologies, including AI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, cyber threats
– Dysfunctional geopolitics, failing states, and outdated institutions
– War, terrorism, and nuclear threats—defense resources needed elsewhere, and more

Climate change is the greatest global stressor. But a single focus on climate change means other global stressors are underestimated. These stressors interact as force multipliers, increasing unpredictable future shocks and even potential civilizational collapse.
Most people don’t want to think about this. Yet the culture is filled with vivid imaginings of dystopias in books, films, television series, and games. Civilizational collapse lurks at the imaginal edge of collective consciousness. Yet mainstream media and “official” government institutions are largely silent.
[…]
Michael Lerner in “Resilience, the Global Challenge, and the Human Predicament”.
2020
  • Michele Guieu

Join The List

Want to hear from us occasionally? Subscribe to our newsletter

Join The List

Want to hear from us occasionally? Subscribe to our newsletter