My conversation with artist, writer, and cultural critic Chris Creighton-Kelly on September 24th, 2024 in Sidney, British Columbia, which is on the traditional, unceded territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ People. Chris is among others things, is co-director, along with artist France Trépanier of Primary Colours – Couleurs primaires. I’ve condensed a long and rich conversation with Chris down to this new ‘fifteen’ minute format. You’ll hear highlights from our exchange about the role of art in times of crisis, the importance of listening to Indigenous peoples, generative discomfort and more…
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What role does art play when the world feels like it’s teetering on the edge? Chris Creighton Kelly challenges us to move beyond simple answers and propaganda, urging us to find inspiration in discomfort and listen to the wisdom of those who have stewarded the earth for millennia.
Chapter Summary
00:00 The Crisis of Our Times
01:55 The Role of Art in Crisis
03:50 Art as a Catalyst for Change
07:15 Generative Discomfort in Art
08:37 Indigenous Knowledge and Environmentalism
11:13 Migration and Traditional Knowledge
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Behind the Story
In a world grappling with climate change, social inequities, and mass migration, Chris Creighton-Kelly seeks to understand how art can foster awareness and action. He challenges the Western-centric view of environmentalism, advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge and a deeper understanding of our place in history. The conversation delves into the complexities of motivation, suggesting that inspiration and imagination are more powerful drivers than guilt and blame.
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00 - 00:00:54] Chris Creighton-Kelly
While there's absolutely no question that we're in a crisis; there's no question about multi crisis. I'm not sure we're in the state of collapse. And I think that methodology, that vision, that understanding of the world can lead to... You were talking about it a few minutes ago, doom scrolling and just doom. I find that that can create a lot of inertia in people, a lot of hopelessness and pessimism. I have a colleague in the US, Arlene Goldbard, and she's quoting (Antonio) Gramsci and she says, ‘pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will’ and I like that shorthand way of thinking.
[00:00:54 - 00:02:13] Claude Schryer
My conversation with artist, writer, and cultural critic Chris Creighton-Kelly on September 24th, 2024 in Sydney, British Columbia, which is on the traditional, unceded territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ People. Chris is among others things, is co-director, along with artist France Trépanier of Primary Colours – Couleurs primaires. I’ve condensed a long and rich conversation with Chris down to this new ‘fifteen’ minute format. You’ll hear highlights from our exchange about the role of art in times of crisis, the importance of listening to indigenous peoples, generative discomfort and more…
Chris, you've been in the arts a long time. You've seen a lot of different types of art practices. What do you think the role of art? And I know there's no one single role of art is in these times. That's a question that I've asked a lot of people and I'm interested in your point.
[00:02:13 - 00:03:39] Chris Creighton-Kelly
Yeah, you see me hesitating because I don't know that there's one answer to that. Despite my own proclivity for a certain kind of art practice, I think art needs to remain the big tent. And in the big tent there's room for, as you just said, different kinds of art. So therefore, to answer the question, what should be the role of art? Well, what art? Whose art? You know, I think art ultimately for me anyway, or at least the kind of art that I'm drawn to. And this is where it becomes problematic for me. When does an artist's work become agitprop? When does it move over into that socialist realism, that climate change activism? I wrote a review of a show where a few years ago in Victoria, which was really, you know, like brilliant artists, talented artists, but they were making statements about the oil industry. So art was put in the service of a kind of political position, which, by the way, I agree with. So it's not about taking issue with the analysis, but you go to the show and it just. It's propaganda. It's a kind of agit prop, presented beautifully because artists are skilled and talented.
[00:03:39 - 00:03:41] Claude Schryer
Preaching to the converted, maybe as well.
[00:03:41 - 00:07:23] Chris Creighton-Kelly
Well, that too, yeah, but. But even to go more to the root of your question, which doesn't immediately address audience, I mean, there were plenty of people there, so that wasn't the issue. But, you know, what role should art play? I think art is best when it doesn't give answers, but rather prompts questions. And I think that's a more roundabout way of getting people to act. That's the work we do at primary college, which is a decolonizing kind of work, which gives people the opportunity and creates the context for them to confront their own reality. In the case of decolonizing in history, in the case of the climate change emergency, their positionality in relationship to it, rather than telling people, you need to do this, and did you know that recycling is not enough and you've got to stop flying in these planes? And there's a preaching element to it, there's a compliance element to it. There's a kind of sense of this is what you must do, and we're monitoring you to see if you're doing it. I think it's. I was reading the other day, I'm sorry, I can't remember the person's name. He's a brown guy, South African, who's recently appointed to this panel that grew out of the Paris talks based upon. It's based upon the idea of stopping nuclear proliferation. Well, this is about stopping fossil fuel proliferation. And he was talking about a colleague of his in Iceland, of all places, who was trying to address this very question. He's a climate change activist, and instead of making a piece about, oh, you need to do this, and here's some agitprop and here's some propaganda. He made a piece which was a funeral for an iceberg, a kind of performance piece. So that doesn't directly say anybody has to do anything, but I think it's much more emotional, maybe is the word more intuitive. In any crisis, artists just adapt. And as we spoke a few minutes ago, nobody really likes to say it out loud because it sounds like you can do without the funding system, which we could do without the funding system that artists will make art. I mean, history and across cultures, it's been shown a million times. Regardless of the circumstances, artists will still make art. Whether I remember discussing with a colleague of mine from El Salvador during the worst part of the war and the disappearing, all that people were still making art underground when the Bosnia or Herzegovina stuff happened. People were playing violin in the streets of Sarajevo. So I think artists will make art. They will adapt their art to their circumstances. They'll do it with or without a funding system, whether it will directly address the crisis. That's the part maybe where you and I, we don't necessarily disagree, but we see that slightly different in the sense that I get the sense from you and listening to your stuff and talking to you that you feel that artists have some kind of responsibility there. I'm not so sure about that, Claude. I'm not so sure, but. And I think it might be a weight too much. And I also feel like there's a motivating thing that involves guilt and blame, that it. That makes me feel discomfort. I think people are best motivated not by guilt, but by inspiration, by defiance, by imagination. And maybe that. Maybe. I'm trying to answer your question indirectly, that that's where artists should situate themselves rather than as propagandists.
[00:07:23 - 00:07:41] Claude Schryer
I just spoke with somebody earlier today about discomfort and that artists are not to say comfortable with discomfort, but they're familiar with discomfort because they deal a lot with ambiguity. They deal with very painful things, and they find ways to bring it through an aesthetic experience.
[00:07:42 - 00:08:15] Chris Creighton-Kelly
And I think this idea, you called it discomfort. Primary Colours – Couleurs primaires, we call it generative discomfort because we're trying to see the yin yang of it, that in that discomfort, it can be very generative. And again, I go back to what I said a few minutes ago. This idea of confronting your positionality, or maybe even confronting is the wrong word, but becoming aware of your positionality. So that. What does that mean? It means knowing your place in history. It means knowing yourself, knowing your place in terms of the privilege that you have and where you live.
[00:08:17 - 00:08:31] Claude Schryer
I know that you've been working on various inequities, right? Is there a parallel between, say, a racial discrimination or systemic racism problem and the climate problem?
[00:08:31 - 00:14:47] Chris Creighton-Kelly
How do those. The parallel that I would. The first thought that comes up is that there's no parallel. Because by and large. And of course, I understand that it's not universally true, but by and large, in the Western world, the various eco movements, the various environmental movements tend to be mostly white. And they don't. I mean, one of the most unexamined resource of how to save this planet is to listen to indigenous people. They don't have every answer, but they have many answers. And I find that, you know, my colleagues, my friends, people who vote for the Greens, people like you, you're kind of an exception because I think you're beginning to really understand this. They paid lip service to indigenous stuff, but they don't really listen. They don't really understand how deep that knowledge is and how that knowledge. So it's like what our colleague Francis was saying a few minutes ago, looking back to look forward, which is an indigenous principle. So what are the ways in which indigenous people have been stewards of this planet for literally millennia? And when I say indigenous people, I'm not just talking about in the North American Turtle Island context, but throughout the world. Throughout the world, Indigenous people, how did they look after this planet? How did they understand sustainability? Now, granted, things were different. There wasn't as many billions of people. We didn't have this huge industrial, you know, capitalist society. But nevertheless, there's a lot. There's a lot of lessons there. So to answer your question more directly, I think, and this is not even to mention the people of color in this world and the cultures of color and the countries of color and the regions of color. If the environmental movement, as a Western world concept, can embrace more what the understandings are from other cultures of the world, it will enrich it, it will animate people. The two greatest polluters, as you well know, are India and China. And so somehow that has to be addressed. Somehow. And that this sort of sitting in this Western world positionality of we have to deal with climate change and, you know, we're going to tell you what to do. It's problematic for me. What about people whose life consists of bombs on their heads? What about people who are going through famine? What about people who are going in, who are in a civil war? What about people who are climate doing climate migration? This is a moment in history. France and I have a piece where we talk about this. It's called Land Landed, and it's about Canada and people on this land. But it relates to the larger question of the world that there's two huge narratives going on in the world right now. One is the human migration. There's more human beings moving, whatever they're moving for, than ever before in human history. They're moving. And the other one is the sense that indigenous knowledge, which is very rooted in land, very rooted in place, very rooted in tradition, it's all about not moving. And they seem to be somewhat in contradiction with one another. And I don't really believe in binary. So we're constantly trying, France and I, who is a very good friend of mine, trying to understand what the synthesis of that looks like or how. How can indigenous knowledge, and again, I speak of the world, not just North America, be incorporated into an understanding of the fact that people are moving? Because for the longest time, as you know, in human history and human evolution, people, they basically didn't move. You're born here and you. You die 5km away, or maybe you even come back and die in the same bedroom where you were born. That's not the case anymore for large sectors of the world. So does that mean we throw out traditional knowledge? I hope not. And does traditional knowledge lead us to a place that is simplistic and rooted in place? I mean, I'm a good example of it. But there are literally millions of people that are in the same space as me who have a problematic relationship to the idea of home. You know, my family's Anglo Indians from India. They've been there for hundreds of years. I'm personally born in the UK, in London. I've lived in Canada most of my life, but I've also lived in other places in the world. And for indigenous people, the idea of home and land is really, like, clear. And it's got an amazing clarity to it that I somewhat kind of envy. But more and more people in the world are like me. They're traveling. Their parents are, you know, Indonesian and Dutch, Japanese and Guyanese, whatever. And Canada's a kind of a potpourri experiment of that. So how time passes. And again, I think there's a lot in the way indigenous people, especially those that have a relationship to tradition in which they live, time, and other peoples in the world, too, the experience of just what Tina was talking about. You know, you sit by a river or you look at a tree, or it doesn't even have to be nature. It can be just sitting and contemplating it and doesn't even have to be an official form of meditation. And I think it relates to your idea, too, about slowing down, but not slowing down in the sense of talking slow, but rather slowing down our consciousness and not being, oh, well, you know, I've got to be at open space. What time is it now? and, you know, that kind of Western world, hectic, constantly on to the next thing before the thing you're in even ends. You're thinking about the next thing, next thing. That's really sad. It also relates to, you know, Piaget and other people who have studied children in play and how they play. Play is timeless. It's endless.
[00:14:48 - 00:14:49] Claude Schryer
It's universal, too.
[00:14:49 - 00:14:58] Chris Creighton-Kelly
Yeah. And it's universal across culture. So if I'm playing with a little thing in the sand, I'm not wondering, is my 15 minutes up? I'm there forever.