The aim of this chapter is to examine in depth the potential for ecological awareness that emerging artistic and creative narrative practices involving mobility may possess. In order to do so, this chapter will analyze the current situation in reference to several projects that exemplify this potential. Our time sees the coming of the Creative Activist in a practice that uses art and media to scale up the ecological message to a global level, to reach a lot of people and to move them.
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In ecological thinking everything is interconnected (Morton, 2010). It is not difficult to join the dots and reach a clear picture of the crisis we face. As expert in ecological critique Timothy Morton (2012) asserts, “ecology isn't just about global warming, recycling, and solar power – and also not just to do with everyday relationships between humans and nonhumans. It has to do with love, loss, despair and compassion. It has to do with depression and psychosis. It has to do with amazement, open-mindedness, and wonder. It has to do with doubt, confusion, and skepticism. It has to do with concepts of space and time. It has to do with consciousness and awareness. It has to do with ideology and critique. It has to do with reading and writing. It has to do with race, class, and gender. It has to do with sexuality. It has to do with ideas of self and the weird paradoxes of subjectivity. It has to do with society. It has to do with coexistence” (p.2). From this position, ecological thinking has to do with art, philosophy, literature, music, and culture. It has as much to do with the humanities as with the sciences, and it also has to do with factories, transportation, architecture and economics. In this way, “[h]uman beings are each other’s environment” (p.4).
As far as art is concerned, recent decades have witnessed a progressive shift in strategies that address the environment, migrating from the production of art objects to the development of participative proposals. New approaches give priority to the creation of synergies and the articulation of practical actions in the field, involving collaborative strategies and people participation. These practices are linked to social rather than aesthetic considerations, and in some cases take advantage of, or rely on, emerging technologies and formats. Infiltrating the technological mainstream in order to convey a message to the highest possible number of people is a strategic issue. The new narrative forms imply bidirectionality, inviting not only interaction but also participation and writing.