Planetary Perspectives: Making Sense of the Sustainability Transformation through Art

In the complex world of the sustainability transformation, quantified numbers and novel technologies don't always tell the whole story. Only with the help of the arts and creative practices can we understand the full dynamic of the unfolding climate crisis. This chapter tells the story of how an encounter with artist David Horvitz and his honey-locust trees led the author to rethink his own practice. It exemplifies how art manages to connect the human and non-human elements of ecosystems, fostering a deeper, collective understanding of our role within them. Through the lens of art, we gain the ability to approach the emergent qualities of the climate crisis, a task rarely achieved by traditional quantitative approaches. The resulting planetary perspectives thus allow us to see new answers and opportunities, eventually helping us to collectively make sense of how to successfully approach the sustainability transformation, the defining wicked problem of our time.