Accumulation
by Ryan Edwards, MASARY Studios

Accumulation. To increase. Its such a sticky word, intentionally and also perhaps not. Attraction, adhesion. To accumulate knowledge, friends, or potatoes might be easily applauded. To accumulate enemies, broken bottles, germs... not so much.

 

Accumulation also suffers from the same challenges with regards to rhythm and perception. As humans, we have been steadily accumulating more things since the industrial revolution, and much of it has not made our planet more healthy or well. The accumulation of wealth, and of debt, is something observable in human-scale time. These things can change, of course, overnight, or build slowly over years; they could be planned or the result of external forces. What is more challenging for us to identify with, and better yet to feel, are phenomena of accumulation that are outside the immediate survival-horizons of our personal lives, or more to the point, our attention-spans.

 

Even when sophisticated tools assist us in observing extended periods and quantities of accumulation, we still suffer from an inability to feel or to make personal such data. We can see that the carbon accumulation is mounting in our atmosphere, and we know why. But as a species we still struggle to feel, and therefore to act on, this information. Perhaps because it is just that—information. Information is intrinsically hard to care about—which is why we are so often moved by a speaker sharing stories that then relate information, climate imperatives, and the like to us. We're not really connecting with the data in those instances, I don't think. We are connecting with the speaker, the poet, the film, the dramatic delivery, the moment we are in. We are actually connecting with the art of delivering the data. Does it bring that data closer to us? Maybe a little.

 

“Images of accumulation are essential to opening the climate to cultural inquiry and political mobilization.”

—From the Introduction of Accumulation: The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change. Nick Axel, Daniel A. Barber, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle

 

Accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere. Accumulation of hope in society. Accumulation of particulate matter in our lungs. Accumulation of climate-curriculums in public education. Accumulation of awareness for developing-nations conditions with regards to climate. Accumulation of heat in the planet’s oceans. Accumulation of healthy babies born. Accumulation of potatoes.

 

Accumulation is by some definition a certainty of more. An action of more-ing. Measuring this more-ing and discussing it can be challenging. What is interesting, is that with regards to many of the critical metrics driving climate change, we are in many cases well aware of the scale of which the accumulation is happening, and can track these metrics over time. So it is not the lack of information, rather it is the connection to this information itself.