Art as a tool to transform society: A systems thinking exploration

Art has always fascinated me, not just as something beautiful or provocative, but as a force intricately woven into society. It's easy to think of art as merely a reflection of our times, but it does far more: it shapes us, questions us, challenges us.

When I began viewing art through the lens of systems thinking, I gained a deeper understanding of its power.

Tony Fry first introduced me to Niklas Luhmann's ideas, particularly his concept that society is fundamentally communication rather than a collection of individuals. This shift in perspective profoundly changed how I understood culture, laws, and norms. Instead of seeing society as people interacting, I began to see it as overlapping systems of meaning-making: each system (art, politics, economics, science) communicating according to its own internal logic, creating meaning that influences the whole.

Art, within this framework, operates as its own distinct subsystem.

I'll admit Luhmann's ideas can be dense, and my interpretation may not capture their full depth. But what I've taken from them has helped me answer a question that's driven my practice for years: What is the power of art?

Art as an Autonomous System

Luhmann suggests that art functions as a social system with its own rules and internal logic. Crucially, it's self-referential, meaning it doesn't need to follow the rules of other systems. Art doesn't have to justify itself through political utility, economic profit, or scientific truth. This autonomy allows art to create without answering to anything but itself.

And in that freedom lies its power.

Because art isn't bound by the constraints that govern other systems, it becomes a space for experimentation. It can explore ideas, perspectives, and possibilities that would be impossible elsewhere. It can fail spectacularly without threatening the stability of society. It can propose worlds that don't yet exist.

This is where real change begins.

Creating Space for Ethical Questions

Luhmann's concept of Ecological Communication raises a provocative question: How can we discuss ethics in a society where every system operates by its own logic, and no universal ethical framework can apply across all of them?

Politics has its ethics (power, governance, justice). Economics has its ethics (efficiency, profit, distribution). Science has its ethics (truth, evidence, methodology). But these ethics often contradict each other. What's economically rational might be politically unjust. What's scientifically accurate might be ethically troubling.

So where can we address ethics as a society?

I believe art provides a unique space for this conversation. Because art exists outside the rigid logic of any single system, it can hold multiple truths at once. It can pose ethical questions without needing to resolve them according to political expediency or economic viability. It creates room to imagine differently.

This is especially critical now, as technology reshapes society at unprecedented speed. The ethical challenges we face around AI, climate, inequality, surveillance, are too complex for any single system to address alone. Art offers a testing ground where we can collectively envision alternatives, reflect on our actions, and shape better futures.

Challenging What We Take for Granted

What fascinates me most about art is its ability to disrupt the flow of accepted meaning.

We move through life accepting certain norms as fixed: how we organize work, how we relate to each other, what we value, what we ignore. These patterns feel natural, inevitable even. But they're not. They're constructed through communication within social systems, repeated until they solidify into "truth."

Art disrupts this process.

A painting, a sculpture, a performance can stop us mid-thought and ask: What if this weren't true? What if we organised things differently? What if we valued something else entirely?

This momentary rupture in the flow of meaning is where art's transformative power lives. It reminds us that the world we've built is not the only world possible. Everything we take as unchangeable is actually open to interpretation, to reimagining, to transformation.

The world can always be different.

Art as Reflection

Art is also deeply reflexive. When we engage with a piece, we're not just observing something external—we're reflecting on ourselves and the society we've created.

Art holds up a mirror. It invites us to examine the values, structures, and assumptions that shape our lives. When art brings social issues into focus—injustice, beauty, loss, hope—it opens space for questioning what we've normalized. It becomes a tool for societal self-observation, helping us see ourselves from outside ourselves.

This reflexivity is crucial because systems, left to themselves, tend toward self-reinforcement. Politics reinforces political logic. Economics reinforces economic logic. Without something standing outside those systems to reflect them back, we risk becoming trapped in patterns we can't even see.

Art provides that outside perspective.

Expressing the Inexpressible

There are emotions, experiences, and ideas too complex, too uncomfortable, or too marginalized for everyday conversation. Grief that has no words. Injustices that have been systematically silenced. Futures we can barely articulate.

Art brings these into the light.

By giving form to what language struggles to capture, art expands what we can talk about, imagine, and ultimately change. It makes visible what has been invisible. It gives voice to what has been silenced. And in doing so, it shifts what's possible within other social systems.

A painting can make us feel something a policy paper never could. A sculpture can hold contradictions that a political speech must resolve. A collaborative installation can embody a vision of collective power that economic theory dismisses as impossible.

Art doesn't just reflect culture, it actively expands it.

Art as Social Evolution

Luhmann argues that art plays a crucial role in social evolution by offering new interpretations and meanings that ripple through society.

Think of art as a laboratory where we experiment with new ways of seeing the world. These experiments happen in galleries, studios, public squares, community gatherings. Some fail. Some succeed in ways we don't immediately recognise. But the ones that resonate, that spread, that shift how people think, those permeate culture.

They influence norms. They reshape values. They create new patterns of meaning. And as these new patterns take root, they can transform old structures and lead to genuine societal change. What begins as aesthetic innovation: a new way of making, seeing, or experiencing can become a social movement, a political demand, a cultural shift.

History shows this again and again. Artistic movements have preceded and shaped political revolutions, economic transformations, and social upheavals. Art doesn't just respond to change, it often instigates it.

The Discomfort of New Thinking

New artistic expressions often create cognitive dissonance—a discomfort that arises when something challenges what we thought we knew.

This discomfort is valuable.

It forces us to reconsider our assumptions, to hold contradictions, to sit with uncertainty. And in that uncomfortable space, transformation becomes possible. We can't change what we can't first question. Art creates the conditions for questioning.

When art disrupts conventional thinking, it doesn't provide easy answers. Instead, it opens the space where answers can be imagined differently. It shifts the ground beneath our feet just enough that we have to find a new way to stand.

That's the power of aesthetic innovation: it doesn't tell us what to think, it changes how we think.

Why This Matters to Me

In the end, I see art as a dynamic, transformative force that challenges the very foundations of society. By existing outside traditional constraints, it allows us to introduce new meanings, reflect critically on the world we've built, and foster the evolution of social norms.

I'm still exploring Luhmann's ideas, still working through what systems theory means for my practice. But this journey has given me an answer to the question that drives my work: Why art?

In a rapidly changing world where technology, climate, and inequality are reshaping everything, art offers a way to imagine new possibilities. It gives us permission to dream differently. It creates space for collective reimagining.

And as a mother, as an artist, as someone who believes the world can be better than it is, I hold onto art as a way to create the paradigm I want my daughter and all children to live in.

Not the world as it is, but the world as it could be. a New Earth.