If global ecological problems fall into the category of what are sometimes called “wicked problems,” then this is all the more so with social-ecological problems, in which it’s not just the ecological questions that elude tried-and-tested solutions but also, and often especially, the social, human ones that make the combination utterly intractable. Addressing them adequately requires, at the very least, interdisciplinary methods, and more often than not transdisciplinary ones.
But if creative methods aren’t in the mix, the results are more likely than not to be disappointing. The notion of creativity has been around, in some sense, for centuries, but the word’s current use as an abstract noun arguably dates back to philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s 1929 book Process and Reality, in which he not only coined the term, but made it the core of his process philosophy. Whitehead called creativity “the principle of novelty,” but insisted that it did not stand apart from its instanciations; rather, it inhered in everything that makes up a creative universe. Every moment experienced by anyone or anything is experienced creatively.
If that seems like a low bar for the kinds of things “creative people” do (think the “cultural creatives” who “add value” to gentrifying urban neighborhoods), it’s actually more the other way around. Creativity does not set some of us apart from others, or even humans apart from ants. The bar is as high as anything is capable of, and the goal (at least for Whitehead) is to extend it, to open it up, so as to “take in the universe” in our every thought, breath, and action.
There are courses in creative thinking and creativity training, some of them more useful than otherrs. But learning is always better from example, and the best artists practice exactly this kind of creativity, taking on the “wicked problems” of our time in ways that open them up to agencies and capacities — our own, among others — that we might not have realized were even there.
Marina Zurkow belongs in that category. Her collaborative work on problems like climate change, sea level rise, invasive species, Superfund sites, and petroleum interdependence draws on digital media, animation, the life sciences, food, and software technologies to build connections between people and the nonhuman world. Her collaborator and interlocutor in her EcoCultureLab sponsored Earth Week keynote this afternoon will be Una Chaudhuri, a pioneer of “eco-theater” and a transdisciplinary thinker and artist who creatively explores the pedagogy of “ecospheric consciousness.” Join us for a presentation by and conversation with these two original and highly creative artists working at the intersections of ecology, science, and public engagement, today at 4:30 p.m. EDT.