Yearly Archives: 2011

Call for Papers: The International Conference on Culture, Politics, & Climate Change

This post comes to you from Cultura21

USA

September 13-15 2012

The Conference on Culture, Politics, & Climate Change is an event of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, that takes place from the 13th to the 15th of September 2012.

Which obstacles and opportunities are U.S. climate policymakers and scientists confronted with? Current issues of climate change will be focused at the International Conference on Culture, Politics and Climate Change. This will happen in a cross-disciplinary way, in order to look at the topic and at intersections between culture, politics and science from different viewpoints.

The political and cultural discourse generates many questions concerning climate change:

How can climate change be addressed on a national scale? Or should climate change rather be addressed on a global level? How is policy made and what is the role of state and non-state actors? How is meaning is derived from our shared culture?

Especially in the U.S. the topic is relevant, all the more facing the national elections and ongoing international climate negotiations.

The Call for Papers is addressed to presenters, who look at the communication of climate change in public and its effect on other cultural and political processes. Comparisons, with papers and panels on culture, politics and climate change in the U.S. and other countries are welcomed.

The following questions may be considered as suggestions for papers and panels,but can be enhanced by other ideas as well:

  • Communication of science
  • Media and environmental policy
  • Social movements/activism
  • Political communication of climate change
  • Mediated representation
  • Non-state actors in climate politics and communication
  • Journalism studies
  • Visual culture
  • Consumer culture studies
  • Spiritualities of globalization
  • Religions and the environment
  • Documentary/feature film

For more information, contact:

Deserai A. Crow, Associate Director, Center for Environmental
Journalism deserai [dot] crow [at] colorado [dot] eduor have a look at the homepage of the conference www.climateculturepolitics.org
The Call for Papers can be downloaded as PDF file here:

Sept 2012 CU-Boulder conference – media, culture & climate change CFP

The deadline for submissions and abstracts is January 10, 2012.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Research and Development

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Creative Scotland have announced a call for proposals for public art research and development projects.

“The fund’s purpose is to support the initial research and scoping of a range of public art projects and approaches to provide opportunities for communities across Scotland to engage with the development of creative places through imaginative, artist-led projects.   The aim of the investment is to open opportunities for the public of Scotland to engage with artists in a wide range of public art activity.  We want to encourage high quality and imaginative projects that contribute to successful places, build new audiences and extend the diversity of public art practice.   In 2011/12 there is a budget of £150,000 available.”

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Exhibition: Andrea Polli – Breathless

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Turin

28 October 2011 -26 February 2012

Andrea Polli

BREATHLESS

in collaboration with Chuck Varga

From the 28th of October 2011 to the 26th of  February 2012 the first solo exhibition by Andrea Polli takes place in Turin in Italy. Andrea Polli is known as an ecological artist and lives and works in Albuquerque in New Mexico. She presents some of her most meaningful works in collaboration with Chuck Varga at PAV Living Art Park in Turin.

Her exhibition Breathless deals in an innovative way with the comprehension of phenomena like climate change and global warming. In cooperation with scientists, weather experts and climatologists she transforms scientific data in aesthetic experiences through mixed media installations. For example data on urban air pollution is analyzed and different interpretations are offered. She chooses site-specific environmental installations to make invisible effects of climate change visible and tangible for the visitor. Polli also sees signs of cultural change in the climate variations and investigates the impact of the climate on the future of life and on the balance of the whole planet.

The exhibition of the American artist is curated by Gaia Bindi and Claudio Cravero and the opening hours are Wednesday to Friday, 13.00 – 18.00 and Saturdays and Sundays, 12.00 – 19.00.

You can find more info, photo, biographic news and video links about the artist at www.andreapolli.com.
For more information about the exhibition mail to info [at] parcoartevivente [dot] it

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

BLDGBLOG: Literary Climatology

Some fascinating ideas from BLDGBLOG in excerpt form a little while ago, which relate to ideas of ecodrama:

1) Performance Physics 

It was, we might say, not performance art but performance physics: an immersive, urban-scale demonstration of quantum dislocation… constantly out of self-synch in a single setting… the skies of San Francisco temporarily modeling an inter-dimensional event.

2) Sky Forensics

…the passage of the Blue Angels had been setting off car alarms all over the city… the locations of the car alarms always coincided with the physical passage of the airplanes… you could actually reconstruct the aerial trajectories of the planes through entirely indirect means.

In twenty years’ time, then, forensic historians could reconstruct the skies of Fleet Week 2011 using nothing but data from parked cars.

3) Literary Climatology

…we briefly got onto the subject of skywriting… The idea of blogging in the sky through the medium of artificial weather—chemically produced, aerodynamic clouds draping the city in a haze of literary climatology…

Of course, it’s worth the whole post….

via BLDGBLOG: Literary Climatology.

Approaches to Arts-based Environmental Education by Jan van Boeckel

Image from Nature Art Education site

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

The Shorelines Symposium which took place at Rozelle Maclaurin included presentations by two keynotes Ian McGilchrist (author of The Master and his Emissary), Chris Drury (artist) as well as a number of others.

The Symposium was organised in conjunction with Alison Bell and Cathy Treadaway‘s exhibition Shorelines currently at in the Maclaurin Galleries.  It was great that a Symposium of this quality took place in Ayr.  We need more of this quality of thinking and discussion.

Jan van Boeckel of the Nature – Art – Education research group at Aalto University, School of Art and Design, Helsinki, gave a short paper entitled Angels talking back and new organs of perception: Art making and intentionality in nature experience.  He has provided the abstract and link to the full paper.

ABSTRACT

This article is about the role of artistic process in connecting to the natural environment. In my research I have explored what participants experienced and learned when they engage in different types of arts-based environmental education (AEE) practices that I have facilitated. The premise of AEE is that efforts to learn about our (natural) environment can effectively take their starting point in an artistic activity, usually conducted in groups.

I found that, on the whole, two major orientations can be distinguished. One starts from the point of aesthetic sensibility: the tuning in with the senses, or with “a new organ of perception” (Goethe), in order to perceive “the more than human” with fresh new eyes. This tradition can be traced back to (but is by no means limited) to the Romantic Movement. Art in this context may help to amplify the receptivity of the senses and strengthen a sense of connectedness to the natural world.

The other major orientation in seeking bridges between nature and art builds on a view of artistic process as leading to unexpected outcomes and “emergent properties.” The fundamentally singular experience of making a work of art may evoke an aesthetic object that becomes a “self-sufficient, spiritually breathing subject” (Kadinsky). The art work can be spontaneously generative and multi-layered with meanings, some of which even ambiguous and paradoxical. But perhaps more importantly: it can catch the participant of an AEE activity by surprise; overwhelm him or her as “coming from behind one’s back.” The element of improvisation, of taking in the new and unanticipated and accommodating for it, is the core quality here.

These two orientations, when practiced as part of AEE, have implications to how we relate to nature through art. In the closing of this article I address the question whether it is possible to bridge the dualism between the two orientations.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Political Ecology

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Where is the politics in political ecology? is a follow-up discussion by the Political Ecology Working Group at the University of Kentucky.  Its an open discussion that anyone can participate in – artworks can be contributed, or short texts (max 300 words).  Deadline 13 December 2011.  There previous discussion, What is Political Ecology? is up on their site.

This way of working (calls for short position statements, with a simple editorial process, published to a blog) seems to me ideal as a means to build up understanding about a new or growing subject. 

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Exhibition in New York

This post comes to you from Cultura21

New York - November 2 to December 15, 2011

FIELDNOTES FROM THE GOWANUS is a visual research exhibition led by The Canary Project commissioned by the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. It takes place from November 2 to December 15, 2011 and features the work of Aron Louis Cohen, Daniella Garcia Rosales, Mare Liberum (Ben Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, Stephan von Muehlen), Curtis Hamilton, Bland Hoke, Christine Sandoval Howard, Hannah Kramm, Camilo Leyva, Simonetta Moro, Sayler / Morris (The Canary Project) with Evan Paschke, Rebecca Volinsky and Louis Wright.

Part of the public programs in conjunction with the exhibition U-n-f-o-l-d: A Cultural Response to Climate Change.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Meaning, The Kaleidoscope Project.

This post comes to you from Engage by Design

[iframe http://player.vimeo.com/video/32328257?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0 500 331]

What is the Kaleidoscope Project?

Interviews and conversations with experts on sustainability, design and innovation, reflecting theory and generating actions between a diverse range of disciplines including design [product, fashion, graphic, web, architects and interiors], science, art, activists, business, psychology and academia.

The 5 Kaleidoscope Videos, split into four different values; Balance, Meaning, Innovation and Culture. During each interview we asked how each value is seen and practised today and how they should be practiced in order to move towards a better future. The last video focuses on the tools and skills that we need to get to that better future, acting as a call to arms for designers and professionals about the need for rethink the way we practice our disciplines.

This short film is about Meaning.

 

Engage by Design is a social enterprise developed through the final Master research of Rodrigo Bautista and Zoe Olivia John in sustainability and design. As a consultancy they specialize in strategic interventions that aim to support the transformation of your product or service into a more sustainable one.

Engage by Design’s research arm intends to act as a platform which enables dialogues and actions between a diverse range of disciplines around sustainability and design.

Rodrigo Bautista – Rodrigo is an Industrial Designer and has worked in many different industries including media, products, services and telecommunications. Today his work focuses on strategic interventions and tools to apply sustainability and design instruments within a company.

Zoë Olivia John – Zoë’s background in Fashion & Textiles has lead her into the research and development of better ways to integrate learning about sustainability for Higher Education students and tutors, particularly within the F&T programme. She is interested in finding new ways to readdress our value structure from one of linear economic quantity to one of circular quality.

Go to Engage by Design

New Online Maps: Population and Climate Change Hotspots

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Population Action International’s mapping website shows how climate change and population dynamics will change the world over time. New features on the site include country profiles which contain maps, graphs, videos, and additional resources that offer a closer look at population, gender, and climate change trends in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, and Peru.

High rates of population growth and climate change consequences overlap in many countries. Interactive maps illustrate how climate change impacts, demographic trends and the need for contraception are likely to affect countries’ abilities to adapt to climate change.

The maps identify 26 population and climate change hotspots – countries that are experiencing rapid population growth, low resilience to climate change, and high projected declines in agricultural production. Many hotspots are currently experiencing water stress or scarcity, a condition that will worsen with continued rapid population growth. And in many countries, a high proportion of women lack access to reproductive health services and contraceptives. Investments in family planning programs in these hotspots could improve health and well-being, slow population growth, and reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts.

The newly-updated interactive mapping website can be viewed here.

The brief guide to the population and climate change hotspots can be downloaded here.

Related themes of population, gender and climate change are highlighted in Population Action International’s new 15-minute documentary film, Weathering Change: Stories About Climate and Family From Women Around the World. The film takes viewers to Ethiopia, Nepal, and Peru to hear the stories of women as they struggle to care for their families, while enduring crop failures and water scarcity. The film shows how women and families are already adapting to the climate change challenges that threaten their health and their livelihoods. As the world’s population hits 7 billion in 2011, the film calls for expanding access to contraception and empowering women to help families and communities adapt to the effects of climate change. The film and related materials can be viewed at http://www.weatheringchange.org

 

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

UN COP17 Climate Negotiations kick off in Durban

The 17th UN negotiations to try and limit the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions and potentially catastrophic climate change began on 28th November, in Durban South Africa. Since the UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into force in 1995, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC have been meeting annually to assess progress in dealing with climate change.

With the slogan “Working Together; Saving Tomorrow Today”, it seems as though there is plenty of optimism and a will to achieve. However, recent COP meetings, in Copenhagen and Cancun, were felt by some to have failed to deliver lasting commitments from countries to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s an update from the UKYCC delegation in Durban on Monday 5 December:

“It’s the first day of the second week and the pressure’s started to build. This is the make or break week for the negotiations and I’ll be  honest – I’m afraid it’s going to be break time. There are some really important issues on the table – the one a lot of people are talking

about is the Kyoto Protocol. It’s the only legally binding treaty we have to reduce carbon emissions but it runs out in 2012. If we want to have emissions reduction targets (which we do), then we need action now.  The KP (as it’s called) only applies to developed countries. The US never signed up to it (they just don’t like playing fair or acknowledging that they’re part of the world) and now Canada is actively trying to kill it so it can sell highly polluting tar sand oil to every other country in the world for maximum profits. Japan and Russia are being lame too.

It’s not often I’m proud to be British but the EU, and the UK within it, are doing their best to keep it alive – I’m 100% of the way behind them. Say it loud and say it proud: ‘I heart KP!

Other important issues are having a broader mandate for a universal treaty that will cover both developed and developing countries come out of Durban. That, and money. Always with the money! But the UNFCCC want to create a Green Climate Fund to manage the money that will support mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The big question is, who’s going to take care of the money and where’s it going to come from?

For a more in-depth insight, check out the second UKYCC hand puppet video. If talking hands can’t explain what’s going on, nothing can!”

Websites to keep up to date with progress of the talks:

  • http://adoptanegotiator.org/ – A blogging platform which tracks the progress of the negotiations day by day
  • un.ukycc.org – the website of the UK Youth Climate Coalition, who have a delegation at the conference
  • http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/index.html – the main website of the conference; useful for full background information.

Go to Arcola Energy