Emily Broad and Nur’aishah Shafiq, Introduction

INTRODUCTION

For many, this year has been and continues to be a lesson in uncertainty. The pandemic reminds us that human endeavors can be easily disrupted and that safety is conditional in the wake of such disruption. No phenomenon embodies this precariousness more than the climate emergency, which threatens to render any semblance of stability a thing of the past.

This year alone, we saw Australia burning. Jakarta inundated. The Bay of Bengal ravaged as super cyclone Amphan made landfall. The list of disasters and potential disasters predates 2020 and will continue to devastate populations with greater frequency and intensity. First to suffer are the vulnerable and marginalized, easily and often obscured. But all strata of society must eventually reckon with ecological breakdown.

The 11th issue of Airport Road became an invitation for student artists within NYUAD to reflect on these existential anxieties, and for us as editors to wrestle with art’s role in an increasingly insecure world.

“Solutions” to the climate emergency have typically been the province of the sciences, both natural and social. Many factions turn to economics and engineering for much needed transformations, or to international politics and climate science for the innovations that might pave the way to a green sustainable future. Our intention is not to diminish the importance of such fields, but to make the case that change—lasting, radical, transformative—requires a shift in values. An introduction of new perspectives or a revision of old ones. And that is where art comes in.

The stories we tell, the images we see, can instigate or critique, reinforce or oppose actions that are taken in other disciplines. Thus, consider

Airport Road: To Extinction an offering to such ends: a recognition that a change in priorities must accompany and even at times precede legislation and societal restructuring. Without such a holistic approach, we risk preserving the mechanisms of power we seek to undo.

The work featured in this issue considers extinctions of various kinds. Not merely that of our own and other forms of life, but also the extinction of ideas: what are the ways of living and thinking that must come to an end if we are determined to avoid further loss of life, and honor the lives that have been lost. What is there to learn and possibly gain amidst such absolute erasure?

As editors, we organized the work into Collapse and Rise, guiding a journey through various forms of loss and possible ways to continue living despite it all. In doing so, we do not foreclose alternative readings of Airport Road: To Extinction, merely to offer ours.

Although the age of climate change is one of uncertainty, destructive actions are already apparent. In Collapse, one sees the evidence of dystopia in our lives, from the ubiquitous waste we produce to the annihilation of entire cities. Artists grapple with both present devastation and imagined apocalypse as they confront the paradox that is humanity —to be killing and dying at the same time. Many pieces confront the struggle families undergo in the wake of this duality, the pain of loving when insufficient care is given to human and non-human life. Against such insecurity, what does “home” even mean? What is living when so much is collapsing—is death preferable to survival?

Pieces within Collapse also investigate the tension between civilization and the natural world, with some artists attempting to reconcile this contrast and others deeming it an insurmountable conflict. Elemental

motifs of snow and forest and sea are at odds with the human structures of oil rig, satellite dish, and museum. Contestations over space speak towards processes of change, asking what endures and what is lost. It is a temporal question as much a physical one, as Collapse ends with the recognition that a changing world is no longer an abstract vision on the horizon, but here now—and one we must face without denial.

In Rise, art explores life amid or post-collapse, wrangling with ways to cope and heal. The opening pieces of this section address particular realities of displacement, not just of humans, but other species on Earth. The lack of security can challenge the conviction in one’s faith, be it in religious entities or more human enterprises. Such questioning demonstrates the capacity for ecological breakdown to destabilize all that one once believed in. But Rise also seeks answers, other guiding experiences within such confusion. What new environmentalism is there to amend the flaws of the current one? Can the wild and the constructed co-exist in mutually benefiting relationships? Can something abhorrent like waste be beautiful, and what are the implications for consumption? Rise contends that there is still unexpected knowledge and beauty to be found within a seemingly dying world.

And yet, not everything is immediately fixed. Mistakes are made. Hands that seek to heal can still hurt. But effort is made to try again, with greater care and attention, always seeking to bring about a kinder future. And that is how Airport Road: To Extinction ends, as it begins, with the cyclical nature of human history. But in asking how we can break this cyclicity, we do not resign ourselves to fatalism, but commit ourselves to action. To vision and reimagination. To art.

A love letter to our failures and triumphs, Airport Road: To Extinction contains musings on how to forward as we commit to certain extinctions,

whatever they may be. Although there is pain and anger within these pages, there’s optimism too, touches of hope that keep us from completely caving to defeat.

We thus invite you now, dear reader, to face the myriad endings and beginnings to be found in the climate emergency. The journey may be discomforting, even harrowing. But we ask you to persist, to converse and imagine. For there are many stories yet to tell, including your own.

Emily Broad and Nur’aishah Shafiq