Living Data
Evolving conversations 
University of Technology, Sydney Main Entrance Foyer, 3 Sept 2014 - 20 Nov 2014
In Ultimo Science Festival, Sydney3-12 Sept 2014
David Buckland
The challenge is to accept the future truth of climatic change and importantly position it as a cultural responsibility, it is our evolved action, our feverish human activity that is causing the planet to warm. To embrace a cultural shift as the necessary part of the solution requires the creative community to help vision the new and for art practice to inhabit reality on a different plane.
Three screen based works
David Buckland. Still from Cache 2012
made with Dr Debora Inglesis-Rodriguez
Video. Duration 00:06:13
David Buckland. Still from Pregnant Walk 2009
Video. Duration 00:05:52
Sound: Bearded Seals and Wind.
David Buckland. Still from There Goes the Ice
2012, made with Robyn Hitchcock
and K T Tunstall
Video. Duration 00:04:20
Sound: Song, There Goes the Ice,
performed by Robyn Hitchcock and K T Tunstall
David Buckland is a Lens Based Artist, Video Director/Producer, Theatre Designer, Curator, Writer, Creator/Director of Cape Farewell. Bringing artists, visionaries, scientists and educators together, Cape Farewell continues to build an international collective awareness and the cultural response to climate disruption. Over 140 artists have created operas, films, artworks, pop music and novels which address the climate challenge and through the process of making art, vision a sustainable and exciting cultural future.
He created the Cape Farewell project to mirror the mathematical modellers interrogation of future time. To address climate means we have act now in order to achieve a result decades into the future, this is counter to accepted practice as humanity to date has only had to address problems of the present. For climate scientists, the projected consequences of inaction are unimaginable, our habitat and humanity would suffer greatly if we don't act. The challenge is to accept the future truth of climatic change and importantly position it as a cultural responsibility, it is our evolved action, our feavorish human activity that is causing the planet to warm. To embrace a cultural shift as the necessary part of the solution requires the creative community to help vision the new and for art practice to inhabit reality on a different plane. To perform an expedition is an action based enquiry, a research enquiry through the process of doing. It is possible, through art practice aligned to action based research, to know future demands with some sense of exactitude, in the same way as mathematical modelling sets a paradigm to map future realities.
Buckland's work is included in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Michael Wilson Collection, London and the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Buckland curated 'eARTh' for the Royal Academy 2009, U-n-f-o-l-d for Cape Farewell 2010, and Carbon 12 for Paris 2012, Carbon 13 for the Ballroom, Marfa Texas 2012, London 2009. He produced the films 'Art from the Arctic' 2006 for the BBC and 'Burning Ice' for Sundance, 2010.
Further engage: Follow Cape Farewellresearch journeys with artists and climate scientists in conversation.
Follow the artist David Buckland
