Messages for Earth is a project by artist, Aubrey Ingmar,
and utilizes satire to portray an eco-socialist political narrative,
addressing the need for immediate action in preventing climate
change caused by human civilization and capitalism.
An
interactive website, www.messagesforearth.com, assists in telling
the fictional story of a future terraformed metaverse, and includes
10 virtual sculptures made with VR and 3D sculpting software.
‘Anti-Capitalism’ is part of the zeitgeist, and this can either be a
good or bad thing. For one, more and more people are becoming aware,
educated, and demanding change, particularly from the larger powers
who can actually change it, those being governments, large
corporations and an elite wealthy class who produce the most
greenhouse gasses. Yet, capitalism has a way of absorbing itself and
anything that counteracts it. The act of hating capitalism can
become capitalistic itself, and in an instant anti-capitalism
becomes a concept sold and marketed. It becomes enough to wear an
article of clothing that reads ‘Tax the Rich’ or ‘Capitalism Kills’,
but stops short right there as a popular slogan, without really
being a driving force or battle cry for change and action.
When
pondering my role as an artist, I aspire to be a better activist
while utilizing technology and collaborating with the art community
in hopes that it doesn’t just get reabsorbed into the ant-capitalist
zeitgeist, although this could be a futile hope... I create virtual
sculptures, ceramic dioramas, and installations that are mostly
anti-capitalist in rhetoric, and when I create, I see my projects as
a form of activism. This project, Messages for Earth,
helped me to reflect on how digital activism is a highly accessible
and engaging way to have a conversation on Capitalism’s role in
climate change, amplifying an eco-socialist voice in the process.It
was important then to make this work relatable, accessible, and
shareable.
Anyone can access this project via this
website URL and view the digital sculptures with an internet
browser. Hopefully it can spread to a larger audience than would be
allowed if physically situated in a gallery space. Or if they have a
VR headset they can use this same link to view it virtually. The
digital sculptures themselves are made initially in virtual reality
and then brought into several 3D softwares for shading and
arrangement. Once composed they can be exported as sculptures for
use in the augmented reality installation or viewable from a link
that can be shared or embedded into a website.
A story
about a future virtual metaverse communicating with present day
society drives the digital sculptures for Messages for Earth. The
future metaverse tells their tale of terraforming to replicate a
more pleasant and liveable environment than what their society would
be experiencing had they not decided to exist virtually. They send
the people of Earth embedded messages in the sculptures, giving them
clues as to what they can do now to prevent a further destruction of
the planet.
A terraformed virtual metaverse might
actually seem like a conceivable future, particularly with the
common and contemporary human malaise of eco-anxiety, thoughts about
our precarious situation and finding escapism from climate dread
within scrolling social media feeds that currently act as metaverses
today. All together it makes the fictional story relatable and the
augmented reality sculptures believable as they portray not just the
messages, but also the landscape and reality of the metaverse from
which they came from.
Messages for Earth is a
fictional narrative, but of course in reality Capitalism destroys
without a conscience, exponentially killing our planet. Ninety-nine
corporations produce 71% of carbon emissions, with the US military
producing more C02 emissions than most industrialized nations. The
horror of it all demonstrated best through the inequality in
relation to who produces the most destruction to the planet and who
will bear the most effects of it. Surely, the 1% will find a way to
not have to experience most of the effects of climate change, while
people at the bottom of the hierarchy will absorb most of the harm.
This thought can be disheartening, and why its important to act as
swiftly as possible now against inequalities that would be
heightened as a result of global warming, while holding governments
and corporations accountable for their grotesque production of
greenhouse gasses. Because of this, I hope for this project to be
shared, engaged with, critiqued, and to communicate towards a
critical conversation.
Anyway…enough of this
negativity…overall, the project has a hopeful vision. The people of
this fictional future metaverse believe that if the people of earth
today protest for systemic change and demand the ecological
protection of the planet be addressed by governments and
corporations through the removal of capitalist profit motives, then
Earth and its creatures will make it.
Aubrey Ingmar
is an artist/activist currently living in Chicago, IL. Recently,
she was included in New American Paintings: Pacific Coast
Competition, and has exhibited at Art Los Angeles Contemporary
with AWHRHWAR, Frieze Art Fair with Artists for Democracy,
Botschaft & L'oiseau présente...in Berlin, Germany,
Galeria Garash in Mexico City, Mexico, The Shrine in New York
City, NY, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art in Rancho Cucamonga,
CA, and Five Car Garage in Santa Monica, CA.
As an
activist, Aubrey has been an organizing member for groups in Los
Angeles such as Artists for Democracy, af3irm, Socialist
Alternative, and helped to form Socialist Students at UCLA.
She completed a BFA in Painting at Northern Illinois
University in 2010 and her MFA in 2015 from The School of the Art
Institute of Chicago.
