Oil

While in New York recently, we took in Edward Burtynsky’s latest exhibition, ‘Oil’, at the Hasted Hunt Kreutler Gallery in Chelsea. It’s an impressive collection, put together over more than a decade, and tracing the value chain of oil from extraction to use, and disposal.

Some of the shots are simply stunning, more akin to abstract art than photojournalism. From Australian mines to Azerbaijani wells, and Shanghai car factories to LA freeways the overwhelming scale and embeddedness of oil as a feature of the contemporary global landscape is thrown right in our faces. Burtynsky’s large format pictures are simultaneously shocking and beautiful, prompting for us a strong, but somewhat ambiguous response. Yes, this addiction to oil has got out of hand; yes, our thirst for oil has ravaged the environment; but, wow, isn’t this pinnacle of modernity also in some ways just downright amazing?

Now for those of us interested in issues of corporate responsibility such ambiguity is nothing new. Balancing the good with the bad, the value creation for some with the value destruction for others, is what much of what our field is all about. But Burtynsky takes this a little further. By seeking to absorb us in the global experience of oil, by joining up the dots in ways that make us want to learn more about what we’re looking at, what we are … yes, enjoying, he draws into the debate not just business ethics nerds like Crane and Matten, but also people that might like a good picture but who might never otherwise give much of a second thought to the ‘oil problem’.

Burtynsky’s exhibition, which is showing simultaneously in New York, Toronto and Washington, is also accompanied by a book, also called simply ‘Oil’. As he says in the introduction:

“In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine. It was then that I began the oil project. Over the next ten years I researched and photographed the largest oil fields I could find. I went on to make images of refineries, freeway interchanges, automobile plants and the scrap industry that results from the recycling of cars. Then I began to look at the culture of oil, the motor culture, where masses of people congregate around vehicles, with vehicle events as the main attraction. These images can be seen as notations by one artist contemplating the world as it is made possible through this vital energy resource and the cumulative effects of industrial evolution.”

Growing up in Ontario as the son of a former GM worker, Burtynsky had his initiation into these cumulative effects at first hand. He has described for instance how his father’s death from cancer (and that of many of his co-workers) might be linked to PCBs in oil used in the workplace. The moral ambivalence of flying in a helicopter to take beautiful shots of the substance that likely killed his father injects an urgency into his work that makes it all the more compelling. Of course, as fellow Ontarians now, this has particular resonance for us. It’s perhaps no surprise that a Burtynsky piece hangs in the boardroom on our school … and next week the film based on his work, Manufactured Landscapes, is going to be shown in our Responsible Business Movie Night series. But Burtynsky speaks not just to his neighbours; his captivating depictions of the global culture built around oil have something for everyone. And you don’t even need to grow your carbon footprint flying to New York to see it. Click here for some large format shots at Photo District News and here for some previews from The Guardian newspaper.

Toronto’s 6th Timeraiser – The unlikely marriage of glamour and charity

So, what scene do we imagine when we hear the word ‘art auction’? Well, lots of money for sure, champagne, posh people, sophisticated conversations, a fair share of vanity – you get the picture. Now think of ‘charity work’: mmhh, not quite the same I guess. More like hard selfless toiling away facing tasks normally shun by many people, such as feeding the homeless, attending the sick, helping the unemployed etc.

Yesterday in Toronto one could see the unlikely union of both worlds. It was Toronto’s 6th Timeraiser Event which displayed once again what a creative, vibrant space can be created by imaginative civil society activists. The core idea is as brilliant as it is simple: The auction features some 30 works of local artists and the interested art collectors make their bid in form of committing time to volunteer for selected charities – rather than bidding money. For most pieces of art people were happy to bid up to 125 hours of their time! This is a heck of a lot of time if – like most folks at the event – you are in a full-on career in business.

So here we are: a great art gallery space in Toronto’s distillery district, nice drinks, great hors d’oeuvres, beautiful people, and of course, pretty cool artwork. While checking out which piece takes your fancy you also have a chance to talk to 40ish agencies which offered various volunteering opportunities to the potential bidders. In the end, it was not only a lot of fun to see who bids where and who gets outbid for which item but it was also an incredibly successful raising of time for charity: last year’s event raised more than 11,500 hours of volunteer time from the guests of the event.

What is great about the event is that it does not confine the ability to be charitable to the Trumps, Buffets or Gates’s of this world who can do so by virtue of their checkbooks. This is based on the one resource where all people are more or less equal: the 24 hours we have per day.

The other aspect from our perspective is of course this one: the entire event was made possible financially through the support of 10 Toronto based companies. As such, this represents a clever form of CSR. Having just published some research on how volunteering creates social capital, this event was a great ‘laboratory’ to observe from the point of view of a researcher.

‘Social Capital’ consists of three things: networks, trust and norms. Such an event creates new networks between the business-, arts- and charity-community which are beneficial for all parties involved. By showing that people working in business are willing to commit substantial chunks of their time to community work it also helps to address the trust issue. The latter being particularly valuable in a time where business has gambled away quite a bit of that trust recently… But it also helps to instill new norms and values into all actors involved. From our perspective this is particular crucial for business folks: having real time exposure to many of the pressing social needs and problems in our view has the potential to challenge a mindset which is all too often confined to just financial results and career advancement.

But most of all, it's a lot of fun! Or as one journalist put it: 'Good is getting really sexy!'