Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing
The main theme of the essays in this collection is how one can extract sustenance from objects of culture. It is about the kind of art that one is able to make against all odds, in a hostile political and social environment that makes people feel despised by the culture around them.
This feeling was particularly clear during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s in the United States. The art that emerged from the artists’ feelings of fear, sadness and anger, provoked an intense emotional reaction across the country and showed how urgent it was for everybody to recognise and respond to the crisis. But it was also a kind of art that created new possibilities, a call to action to break the “silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people.” (1)
While I was reading Funny Weather, I was thinking that we’re living not only through a global health emergency but also through a climate emergency and a political emergency, both in the United States and in Europe. There are parallels—and differences - between the COVID-19 pandemic and the AIDS crisis. There is anger and isolation and loneliness and anxiety. Does art matter when we are facing such a frightening and horrendous situation? Art can connect and empower, it can inspire action. And action can lead to change, which we urgently need.
(1) From the manifesto which was released by the gay activists of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), in New York in 1997.