Ecocide

This piece was made during the COP26 negotiations last year. It combines three photographs of a man wearing a mask walking toward the viewer with a coal powered power station in the distance. The garish colours represent a bleak and desolate landscape.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) brought together 120 world leaders and over 40,000 registered participants, including 22,274 party delegates, 14.124 observers and 3.886 media representatives. Many of the registered participants represented the global interests of oil and fossil fuel companies and their shareholders.

“The approved texts are a compromise,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today. They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.”

The title was inspired by the excellent book ‘Ecocide’ by David Whyte. In it he argues that we have to “kill the corporation before it kills us”. He maps out a plan to end the corporation’s death-watch over us.

You can buy ‘Ecoside’ and other work by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/product/ecocide