The Adaptation Issue

Given the dire findings contained within its pages, the World Meteorological Organization’s most recent State of the Global Climate report might have dominated headlines upon its release on April 19, 2021. That it did not, that it merited only a scattering of stories and went largely unnoticed, is perhaps indicative of how frequently we’ve been told disaster is coming—and how inured we’ve become to a calamitous future.

Among other things, the report found that the global average temperature last year had already reached 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—an increase alarmingly near the 1.5-degree threshold that scientists have warned we must not cross. The report prompted United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to say, “We are on the verge of the abyss.” Whether or not we fall into that abyss, humanity almost certainly faces cascading and inter-related crises in the century to come. As greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, forests burn, and the tundra thaws, the current pandemic may well be remembered as the start of a uniquely cataclysmic era.

For decades now, “adapt or die” has served as a slogan of sorts for business consultants and other charlatans, and we are sick of their ultimatums, coercive as they often are. Yet given the drastic changes afoot over the past year, and those that are on the way, we hit upon adaptation as our theme for Full Bleed’s fifth issue. We hoped to gather here writings and artwork that speak to the disruptions that shape modern life and the diverse ways artists are responding to them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how fast the changes have come at us amid the pandemic, some of the offerings here reflect an urge to slow down, to adapt our lives to natural rhythms. In “Returning to the Earth,” D.W. McKinney rediscovers a passion for gardening, and in David Brooks’ Budding Bird Blind, we see an artist draw inspiration from the concept of forest succession, according to which forests expand and retract over time. Relatedly, in introducing Some Spells Are Bigger, a series of composite photographs of archived birds, Krista Caballero asks, “How might we adapt to changing worlds in ways that are just and value all life forms?” Stephanie Paine’s striking pin-hole photographs of the sun and Diane Goettel’s poignant nonfiction piece “Climatology” likewise speak to the interconnectedness of living things and natural forces.

While some contributions address environmental phenomena, others approach adaptation in more purely aesthetic terms. Natasha Lvovich shows us how the celebrated painter and author Leonora Carrington’s adaptation of a new language helped open for her new modes of writing and thinking, as she liberated herself from a repressive childhood and embarked upon her remarkable adventures in surrealism. A.S. Khan charts and critiques a shift in aesthetic strategies exhibited in the works of Mona Hatoum and Adrian Piper, artists who have had to struggle against the pernicious effects of racism. And emerging painter Jerrell Gibbs finds aesthetic inspiration from snapshots of friends and family in his hometown of Baltimore. His vibrant portraits commemorate everyday Black life even as they call to mind the work of Henri Matisse.

Of course, no matter how capable humans may be at adaptation, it is no guarantee that things will work out as we hope. Sometimes, as in T.J. Butler’s story “Sunday School,” adaptation entails accepting what cannot be changed or fixed. And our attempts at coping are often messy and imperfect, as in “A Museum in Flux,” wherein an art guard chronicles how the Baltimore Museum of Art has struggled to respond to the unfolding pandemic.

Fashioned during the long coronavirus winter of 2021, this issue emerges just as the world is ready to thaw. While the offerings here make no attempt to sum up the social and ecological disruptions that have marked this time, they do make clear that our adaptations to them will necessarily be idiosyncratic and singular. We launch this issue with the hope that the challenges we face will foster in us the capacity to adapt in harmony with each other and other creatures on this earth. We hope, too, that you find something here that speaks to your own journey through this bewildering year. 

Thank you for reading and stay in touch.

--The Editors

June 2021