Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics

“Ever since the publication of Gender on Ice, Lisa E. Bloom has been one of the most innovative scholars in the field of polar aesthetics and the cultural history of the polar regions. Working with an array of creative art practices, Bloom demonstrates how new ways of feeling, seeing, and thinking are integral to the current and future social, environmental, and geopolitical predicament. This is a book for dark times, but it is hopeful, resilient, and socially just.” - Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics, Royal Holloway, University of London

“The world looks and feels precariously different for anyone alive and paying attention, and artists and filmmakers have been among the most incisive in elaborating what is happening and what might come to be. Building on these insights, Lisa E. Bloom’s Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics brings the author’s incisive scholarship to the hinge between art and environment, addressing the uncanniness of the global climate crisis through aesthetic and historical analyses of how we got here.” - Amelia Jones, Robert A. Day Professor of Art and Design, University of Southern California

"An impressive and fascinating study which prompts further critical discussions in the field of polar art. The book is a must-read for any scholar interested in the aesthetics of climate change and will have a lasting impact within the field of Environmental Humanities." - Anne Hemkendreis, ArtHist.net

“Lisa Bloom’s Climate Change and the New Aesthetics integrates text with imagery to highlight problems, not isolated to one location or a particular ethnicity. . . . Close scrutiny of artworks which contextualize Climate Change brings problems and hopefully solutions to the forefront without verbally scolding.” - Jean Bundy, AICA E-MAG

“This is a book capable of expanding a reader’s understanding whether they are drawn to it from the worlds of art, activism, critical scholarship, or some combination thereof. Connecting what is often separated, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics is a vital read for artists, activists, and academics alike.” - Alice Oates, H-Environment, H-Net Reviews

"[T]hrough well-chosen examples, understandable text, an extensive bibliography, and detailed footnotes, Bloom’s scholarship makes an important contribution to the literature for institutions with graduate programs and/or libraries which aim to include diverse views of the global environmental crisis." - Barbara Ann Opar, ARLIS-NA

"Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics marks an important intervention in aesthetic and environmental criticism. The book contributes to a growing body of scholarship that engages with climate change not merely as an ethical injunction but as an unavoidable facet of contemporary life." - Elizabeth Berman, Journal of Postcolonial Writing

"A valuable addition to a larger field of Ice Humanities. . . . Bloom’s detailed delineation of this historical ground not only creates a context for the environmental interventions of the art that she engages with; it also highlights the enmeshment of aesthetics, especially in the poles, with science and technology." - Paromita Patranobish, Journal of Ecohumanism

"[Bloom] recognise[s] how materially, culturally, historically, and environmentally diverse polar art history can be, and ... offer[s] ways of looking critically and thoughtfully at the art and visual culture of the Arctic and Antarctic." - Isabelle Gapp, Art History

"Although Bloom introduces us to a wide range of works from installations to documentary films to protest art, the works convincingly cohere as examples of visual media that challenge the old, yet resilient colonial aesthetic of the sublime and conquerable poles. The analyses are accompanied by many high-quality images: Every treatment of an artist includes at least one black-and-white illustration, and there are thirty-one color plates. These usually allow the reader to follow Bloom’s analyses, as well as form their own impressions." - Jenna M. Coughlin, Scandinavian Studies

". . . Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics figures as the most comprehensive accounting yet of contemporary polar art and the point of departure for any further thinking on the subject. It is the most thorough attempt to think through aesthetic questions to which the poles and art about them give rise." - Robert Bailey and Pete Froslie, CAA Reviews