Sophie Mason

Process image by Annabel Howard

Sophie Mason is a visual artist who makes objects shaped by and from her local landscape. For over a decade her work has explored different approaches to the natural world, working and thinking within the intersections of ecology, climate change, the domestic space, health and gender. Sophie’s textile works use the fabric of a mordanted canvas both to document the marks made from her experiences within the landscape and from the pigments processed from the mineral and plant based materials she finds around her. Over time the accumulative residue stains the canvas to build a map of care, tracking her relationships with the land around her.

At a certain point the canvas or ‘blankets’ spend more time in the studio than outside. Sophie draws on them with children’s pencils or ground up pastels, sews pockets into them for medicinal herbs, seeds, feathers or makes shelves for found objects.

Home 4 (2021) 187 x 88 x 15cm Avocado stones, madder root, hail, snow, sun bleach, oxygen bleach, rust, iron, rain, soda ash, colouring pencils, charred wood, clay, apple blossom, gorse flowers, river water, mould, rescue remedy, vinegar, willow bark, lavender oil, children’s chalk, house brick, canvas, wood, brackets, screws etc.

The Anthropocene is the term that is used to describe the current epoch in which human activity has altered the Earth’s climate and environment, beginning in the mid 20th century to present day. The prefix ‘anthro’, meaning human, states it is humanity who has influenced the climate. However, Jason Moore has proposed a new concept called the Capitalocene, which suggests this age is dictated by capitalism, and that has influenced the climate and environment.

‘Earth systems have been overstretched only under capitalist conditions- in the process transforming humans themselves into a bio- technical Avatar hybrid. Modern capitalism thus is more than a social formation. Capitalism changed human existence; it interpenetrates both earth systems and the mental worlds of each (social) individual.’ (Altvater, Anthropocene or Capitalocene?,2016)

Altvater argues capitalism has evolved from an economic system to a planet altering way of life that has consumed humanity. Capitalism, like a disease, is collectively destroying ecosystems and the human brain. This economic system has changed the way the human brain thinks, to value worth based on labour and productivity. Altvater implies capitalism has turned humans into compliant machines by his use of language. ‘Biotechnical,’ the use of living organisms to make products, has a ‘hybrid’ meaning, the combination of human and the living organisms. The combination suggests a machine whose purpose is to create and consume products.

Humanity has changed from proposing and creating systems and being in control of them, to the system of capitalism running humans, with no one person or group of people powerful enough to oppose the systems and stop the inevitable destruction of the environment caused by the relentless use of Earth’s scarce resources that humanity needs to survive. The system has created a very few people with huge wealth and power who could implement change, but they are unwilling to because they are so enthralled by the system that enabled them to create that wealth and gave them their power. I am linking Altvater’s writing to artist Ai Weiwei’s installation piece Sunflower Seeds (2010) because the piece illustrates modern capitalism.

See fig. 1, Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds (2010) consists of millions of handmade, porcelain sunflower seeds placed on the floor of the Tate Modern, London. The installation was accompanied by a film of how the seeds were made. In the film Weiwei doesn’t say much about the meaning behind the work but instead focuses on the 1600 people of Jingdezhen who were involved in making the porcelain seeds, highlighting the importance of bringing them work and how he’d like to support them in the future with more work. Weiwei also mentions that many political paintings include sunflower seeds. The example he gives is a painting of Mao Zedong (b.1893), founding father of the People’s Republic of China, where he is surrounded by sunflowers, symbolising him as the sun and the sunflowers as people loyal to the party. (Weiwei, Artist Interview Tate, 2010)

Simone Hancox writes an article about the work and its geopolitical themes. She explains that culture plays an important role in the global distributions of power, especially in wealth and quality of life. (Hancox, Art, Activism and the geopolitical imagination, 2012) The work Sunflower Seeds embodies the cultural power difference because it was only made possible by

Extract from: An Extamination of the Term Anrthpocene By Summer Auty

Fig. 1. Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds (2010) © Ai Weiwei and Fake Studio Photo © Tate

the lower minimum wage in China that allowed the artist to pay £0.58 per hour, in comparison the UK’s minimum wage at the time which was £5.93. This difference in value highlights the geopolitical understanding that the East is a producer and the West is a consumer. It would be impossible to reverse the roles because the products made in the West would be unaffordable to the consumers in the East.

I think it’s worth exploring that these sunflower seeds are a duplicate of a real sunflower seed, which typically holds lots of nutritional value. The fact these sunflower seeds are produced by human hands means they no longer hold nutritional value, similarly to the way food is produced. Food production, because of capitalism, now must be done so cheaply to maximise profits that it no longer holds any goodness, so food ends up looking the same but having no benefits at all. There is also sadness in that these sunflower seeds will never blossom into sunflowers because of their artificiality. Their natural purpose stripped away for human consumption.

Hancox states ‘the structures that enable the production of Sunflower Seeds also sustain the hegemony of global capitalism and the transnationalization of production.’ (Hancox, Art, Activism and the geopolitical imagination, 2012) She explains the cheap labour in China is what keeps the capitalist system going across the world. The exploitation of non-Western civilisations allows the system to keep growing and the West to consume more excessively. Weiwei’s piece allows the Western audience to consider their consumption, as by visiting the Tate Modern and being able to hold the seeds they are consuming the work. Weiwei has created a visual representation of global capitalism and the production of goods by having the work made by Chinese hands and consumed by Western hands. Hancox goes on to explore connections between East and West oppression:

‘Ai points to the relative degrees of hypocrisy and contradiction that are also practised in the West: on the one hand, condemning the political oppression of Chinese citizens by the Chinese state, and on the other, permitting the economic oppression of Chinese citizens by Western economies of neo-liberalism.’ (Hancox, Art, Activism and the geopolitical imagination, 2012)

Hancox indicates that Western civilization criticizes how the Chinese government treats their population but has chosen to ignore how Western consumer culture impacts the Chinese workers and how companies exploit their labour. Furthermore the question arises of, are the Chinese government or consumers responsible for the inequality and mistreatment of the Chinese working class? The term Anthropocene suggests all humans are to blame for climate change including the Chinese workers not just the consumers or powers that be.

Unintentionally Altavter proposes an answer to my question of responsibility:

‘Humanity- acting through capitalist imperatives- is organising nearly all its productive and consumptive activities by tapping (and depleting) the planets energetic and mineral reserves. This planetary dominance – like the industrial revolution- is also a revolution.’ (Altvater, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? 2016) He explores how people have established ‘planetary dominance’ through abusing the planet’s properties, systems and materials. However, to answer my question, he suggests that this is abnormal human behaviour, that humans are acting through capitalist commands. If humanity is being controlled or conditioned to do these things, then they are therefore not responsible for the mistreatment of other beings or to blame for depleting the planets reserves, making the term Capitalocene more appropriate.

However, large corporations consciously choose profitability as their main objective. ‘Ai astutely raises an ethical expectation that the fundamental issue of human rights should be prioritized over trade negotiations.’ (Hancox, Art, Activism and the geopolitical imagination, 2012) Weiwei’s idea of what should be done is a question of ethics for corporations, which do they value more profit or well-being? I think not valuing others well-being can be linked to Agamben’s (b.1942) theory The Anthropological Machine. Large corporate companies may see their suppliers as less than human, allowing them to exploit their labour. This leads me into my next chapter about anthropocentrism.

The full essay is available to read on the Solastalgia website.