Climate Change Experts, Elites and Artistic Stages for Debate: Visually Represented Bodies and Faces and the Circulation of Desire and Hate

Visual media and visual arts have been and continue to be used in very varied ways in connection with the climate crisis: visual arts, for example, have been targeted by climate activists (for example. Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion) who have thrown food at pictures in museums. At the same time, visual media are currently being used extensively in social media, podcasts and articles in traditional media, in films and on television to bring the expert opinions of climate researchers to the public. Finally, visual arts are also being used as a stage to provoke debates on climate change, to present alternative perspectives and approaches to the mainstream, and to question existing attitudes. This paper brings these three strands together. It asks how visual media circulate both desire and mimetic imitation, as well as resentment and hatred, and how these dynamics relate to each other. These processes and dynamics are situated in a social context characterised by populisms and the emergence of a knowledge society. The former is characterised by a turning away from and rejection of elites, while the latter is characterised by a tendency towards depoliticisation. This meets with a variety of demands for equality in the face of existing or deepening inequality in connection with increased processes of comparison, evaluation and judgement – in which visual media take on the dynamic mediating role mentioned above. In contrast to this, the potential of visual culture and visual arts to popularise – which can never be completely separated from populist approaches – is brought into play and discussed. Cultural forums and artistic interventions are presented as places where such processes can be reflected upon and negotiated, turned around with humour and thus politicised in new and different ways. Methodologically, this study draws on approaches from critical theory, discourse theory, political iconology and visual culture studies.