ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades several discourses around sustainable development and sustainability introduced a cultural component. Among the main clusters of discourses that emerged are (1) establishment of culture as a “fourth pillar of sustainability” and formulations of a “cultural sustainability”, (2) identifications of “culture(s) of sustainability” and (3) articulations of a “cultural dimension” of sustainability or sustainable development. These discourses also intersected or converged with approaches relating the arts and aesthetics to theoretical and practical aspects of sustainability.
At the intersection between wider considerations of “culture and sustainability” on the one hand, and a more specific interrogation of relations between “the arts and aesthetics and sustainability” on the other hand, emerge a number of cultural-scientific (kulturwissenschaftliche) insights and issues. The importance of imaginaries, of imagination and of aesthetics of complexity becomes salient, as well as the interface of memories and futures. The arts, aesthetics and a culturally sensitive approach to social-scientific research then reveal the potential for a transdisciplinary advancement of sustainability research, laying the ground for an “artful sustainability” research beyond the limitations of the young neo-discipline of “sustainability science”.
