ABSTRACT
Chapter 5, “Artists of the Floating World,” identifies our first attempt to put our revised art-sustainability relationship into practice. In this case, connecting Western art making with the constraints of Modernist dichotomies as a way of linking art to sustainability. Here we sought to inspire artists to link Modernism to both sustainability and their own tradition and practice. Is this a fruitful way to engage artistic processes? What sort of works emerge? What do they say about our larger interests in the links between Modernism and sustainability? Does this create the opportunity to transgress Modernist rationalities? Here we outline the open-ended commissioning format as our attempt to connect art to non-aesthetic interests without instrumentalizing. We propose an evaluation strategy focused on the art, artistic processes, experience of the artists, and audience appreciation of the works. Perhaps this approach is preliminary to wondering at the larger effects the work has on a broader social context, or perhaps this is as far as evaluation measures should attempt to go in working with the social impact of art? (This question gets amplified considerably in the empirical work featured in Part III).
