‘It’s a slow catastrophe’: artists try to tackle the dangers of rising sea levels

Greta Pratt (American, b. 1955) Chairs on Dock, from the series Tidewater, 2020 Archival pigment print. Photograph: Greta Pratt/Courtesy of the artist

How should culture respond to the climate crisis? Can it provide a wake-up call that isn’t so brutally loud and depressing that we don’t just smash the alarm clock and go back to sleep?

Exhibit A in such debates right now is Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s comedy/disaster film about two astronomers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) trying to warn that an Everest-sized comet is hurtling toward Earth. The star-studded allegory of distraction and denialism has been panned by critics but praised by climatologists.