What could art making and aesthetics mean to us in these difficult times? Can we justify going off to paint or to spend time in nature when there is so much destruction going on in the world? Aesthetics is about opening up our senses to the world - but do we even want to stay sensitive when there is so much pain? How do we deal with that paradox?

Today’s episode is with artist and educator Jan van Boeckel. Jan’s work brings together art, education and ecology. He has been Professor in Art & Sustainability at Hanze University in the Netherlands and is now a Senior Research Associate there. He is also an avid painter, and hosts wild painting courses throughout Europe.

LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT

Jan’s website

Jan’s Wild painting courses

Active Facebook group on arts-based environmental education

“Call of the mountain” – a film on Arne Næss and deep ecology

Everyone is an artist - Joseph Beuys

Enabling constraints

James Hillman: Our crisis is an aesthetic crisis

Gregory Bateson writes about “the pattern that connects” in Mind and Nature

David Abram (who talks about Eros)

Robert Jay Lifton and psychic numbing

Renée Lertzman’s book Environmental Melancholia

Bayo Akomolafe: the times are urgent, let’s slow down.

F. Scott Fitzgerald : Superior intelligence is the ability to embrace two completely contrary ideas, and still retain the ability to function

Bill Wahpepah of the American Indian Movement

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