27 March 2023: At this event, we spend an afternoon at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where we through creative and scientific means explored the role of trees in the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse.
This Green Tease event took place at the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) and provided an opportunity for creative practitioners and environmentalists to learn and make connections on sustainable tree planting in Scotland. The event started with Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes RBGE and artist Keg de Souza introducing the exhibition Shipping Roots followed by a guided walk by Dr Max Coleman before we all met at the Botanics Cottage to discuss sustainable forestry and the role of creative practice in ensuring this. The discussions were informed by presentations from Pat Snowden from Scottish Forestry and ecological artist Dr Cathy Fitzgerald. This event was organised in collaboration with the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh.
Speakers
Keg de Souza. Artist of Goan ancestry who lives and works on Gadigal land and explores the politics of space through temporary architecture, food, mapping and dialogues. Until the end of October Keg de Souza will be in residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh researching their collections and tracing colonial legacies through the movement of plants between the UK, India and Australia. Keg de Souza spoke about the exhibition Shipping Roots, which explores how plants have moved through the British Empire including eucalyptus, prickly pear and many seedlings which came to the UK in sheep fleeces. The exhibition highlights the role of art in linking the story of plants, history, and people in a physical space, opening up dialogues and imaginaries that are critical in finding solutions to the climate crisis.
Dr Max Coleman. Science Communicator for the Botanics. Max Coleman has had an interest in trees for as long as he can remember. He worked for a number of years in nature conservation, and developed an interest in natural forests and the processes that operate within them. As a science communicator, he aims to make plant science accessible and engaging. Max Coleman guided us through how and why a shift to natural regeneration is positive for plants, people and planet.
Emma Nicolson. Head of Creative Programmes was appointed to RBGE in December 2018. She formerly served as founding director of ATLAS Arts based in the Isle of Skye and spent three years as a senior manager for Australia’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Emma has been actively involved in the arts for over twenty years working with leading cultural institutions across the world. Emma Nicolson introduced the new exhibition and spoke about RBGE work with artists in residence and their determination to work with ecological issues.
Pat Snowden. Head of Economics and Woodland Carbon Code at Scottish Forestry. Pat Snowden covered research on CO2 removals generated by planting different types of woodland and provided background to the Woodland Carbon Code, which is the UK’s government-backed, voluntary carbon market standard that helps companies become carbon neutral. He highlighted how Scotland is creating 75 % of all new woodland in the UK and how this is an effective carbon sink, and that the government is planting at least 4000 ha each year (!) of native woodland.
Dr Cathy Fitzgerald. Ecological artist based in Ireland originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand. She works for a sustainable behaviour change through long-term ecological ‘ecosocial art practices’ and has developed the project “The Hollywood Forest Story” turning a conifer plantation destined for clear-fell into a permanent, species-rich productive forest using new continuous cover forestry methods. Cathy Fitzgerald shared her work exploring sustainable forestry through art practice with a focus on the consequences following the monoculture that comes from clear-fell forestry. She argued, that we must learn from Indigenous peoples that successfully protect 85% of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity regions. You can watch the full recording below (very recommended).
Discussions and visualisations
Following these inspiring presentations people went to discuss the questions: How can we ensure more sustainable forestry in Scotland, and how can creative practice and art contribute to that?
To sum up these discussions we had Artist and designerAlice Dansey-Wright visualize them. You can see the result here.
The Arts & Climate Initiative and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts invite you to the virtual launch of The Future Is Not Fixed: Short Plays Envisioning a Green New Deal. Featuring the 50 plays written for our Climate Change Theatre Action 2021 festival, and a series of essays, this anthology is our latest achievement towards telling the many stories of the climate crisis in a way that empowers all of us.
Join us and playwrights Camila Le-bert (Chile), Madeline Sayet (U.S./Mohegan), and Marcus Youssef with Seth Klein (Canada)who will read their plays 2079, What We Give Back, and So Beautiful Today, So Sunny.
This event is hosted by Chantal Bilodeau, Ian Garrett, and Julia Levine. A conversation with the playwrights will follow the readings, and we will raffle off signed copies of the book.
Admission is free but you must reserve your spot in advance in order to receive the Zoom link. Your registration automatically enters you into the raffle.
Note : Une version en français de cet article est disponible sur : Français
(Claude Schryer in 2023)
It’s March 6, 2023 and I’m at Trout Lake Park in Vancouver. About 2 years ago, I went for a long soundwalk with climate activist, and now politician, Anjali Appadurai, which became episode 23 of season 2 of this podcast:
It was the first time that Anjali did a soundwalk and it was a very powerful moment for me because I’ve often thought back about what Anjali said that day. It has informed my work as a climate activist and on the role of art in the climate emergency. I encourage you to read, to listen to it. Today, we are going to hear an excerpt from that conversation, near the end, about the issue of privilege which comes back again and again in this sounding modernity season. So here’s Anjali from our soundwalk in 2021….
(Anjali Appadurai in 2021)
This really meshes with what I was talking about. It circles back to the beginning of the conversation when we were talking about who’s the ‘we’ and that privilege is the central question to that. Looking at the issue as this multi-layered thing and looking at it as a spectrum of history. What have the power dynamics been? Say you can take a slice of history, say the last 500 years. What were the advantages? Privilege can go back as far as you wanted to go back, right? And of course it’s so nuanced. Not every white guy has this much privilege, but you do have a privilege that goes back hundreds of years and I think one aspect of privilege, one that a lot of people leave out is this economic aspect, right, of class and resources. And that is not often talked about in the climate conversation, but it’s a huge piece of it. Because when we talk about the extinction of our species, this extinction doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in a spectrum. Who are the last ones standing? Those with the most resources and who are the first ones to go? It’s those with the least, the most disenfranchised. So I don’t think you can talk about climate without talking about privilege ultimately. And I think it’s on each of us to unpack that for ourselves and to bring that into the conversation.
(Claude in 2023)
Back in 2023 again now. I’m going to skip ahead to another excerpt of our conversation from 2021 with Anjali. This time she talks about privilege in a more global context.
(Anjali in 2021)
I’ll just leave with one more thought. There’s a lot of framing about how to divide up in an equitable way, the remaining emissions, the sort of carbon budget of the world. So the carbon budget is a framing in and of itself and then there’s this other framing that floats around the right to atmospheric space and how, if you look at atmospheric space as a human right, and if you divide up how much we have left in the world, how many people have way more than what would be their fair share, how many people have way less? And that’s a deep question of privilege as well. And talking about the global north, I mean, that really plays into our global privilege.
(Claude in 2023)
My question for you is ‘what are the privileges in your life?’
Thanks to Anjali for her permission to use our 2021 conversation in this context. Note : Une version en français de cet article est disponible sur : Français
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
The post e114 privilege – what are the privileges in your life? appeared first on conscient. conscient is a bilingual blog and podcast (French or English) by audio artist Claude Schryer that explores how arts and culture contribute to environmental awareness and action.
———-
About the Concient Podcast from Claude Schryer
The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a series of conversations about art, conscience and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). The language of the guest determines the language of the podcast. Episode notes are translated but not individual interviews.
I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.
The term “conscient” is defined as “being aware of one’s surroundings, thoughts and motivations”. My touchstone for the podcast is episode 1, e01 terrified, based on an essay I wrote in May 2019, where I share my anxiety about the climate crisis and my belief that arts and culture can play a critical role in raising public awareness about environmental issues. The conscient podcast / balado conscient follows up on my http://simplesoundscapes.ca (2016-2019) project: 175, 3-minute audio and video field recordings that explore mindful listening.
season 1 (may – october 2020) : environmental awareness and action Season 1 (May to October 2020) explored how the arts contribute to environmental awareness and action. I produced 3 episodes in French and 15 in English. The episodes cover a wide range of content, including activism, impact measurement, gaming, arts funding, cross-sectoral collaborations, social justice, artistic practices, etc. Episodes 8 to 17 were recorded while I was at the Creative Climate Leadership USA course in Arizona in March 2020 (led by Julie”s Bicycle). Episode 18 is a compilation of highlights from these conversations.
season 2 (march – august 2021 ) : reality and ecological grief Season 2 (March 2021 ) explores the concept of reality and is about accepting reality, working through ecological grief and charting a path forward. The first episode of season 2 (e19 reality) mixes quotations from 28 authors with field recordings from simplesoundscapes and from my 1998 soundscape composition, Au dernier vivant les biens. One of my findings from this episode is that “I now see, and more importantly, I now feel in my bones, “the state of things as they actually exist”, without social filters or unsustainable stories blocking the way”. e19 reality touches upon 7 topics: our perception of reality, the possibility of human extinction, ecological anxiety and ecological grief, hope, arts, storytelling and the wisdom of indigenous cultures. The rest of season 2 features interviews with thought leaders about their responses and reactions to e19 reality.
season 3 (october 2021 – february 2022 ) : radical listening Season 3 was about radical listening : listening deeply without passing judgment, knowing the truth and filtering out the noise and opening attention to reality and responding to what needs to be done. The format is similar the first podcast format I did in 2016 with the simplesoundscapes project, which was to ‘speak my mind’ and ‘think out loud’. I start this season with a ‘soundscape composition’, e63 a case study (part 1) and e64 a case study (part 2), a bilingual speculative fiction radio play, set in an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada’. It concluded with a soundscape composition ‘Winter Diary Revisited’.
season 4 (1 january – 31 december 2023) : sounding modernity
About
I’ve been retired from the Canada Council for the Arts since September 15, 2020 where I served as a senior strategic advisor in arts granting (2016-2020) and manager of the Inter-Arts Office (1999-2015). My focus in (quasi) retirement is environmental issues within my area of expertise in arts and culture, in particular in acoustic ecology. I”m open to become involved in projects that align with my values and that move forward environmental concerns. Feel free to email me for a conversation :
Apply to join us July 20-23 for an in-person, climate-focused version of our annual Organizing with Artists for Change Summer Institute. The Institute will gather artists and climate workers from across the country to explore, energize, and advance creative solutions on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
The Institute is co-directed by Cassie Meador, Dance Exchange Executive Artistic Director, and Dr. Jamē McCray, Interdisciplinary Ecologist and Future Fields Co-Director, with additional support from Amanda Newman, Dance Exchange Associate Director of Programs. Additional guest artists and experts will be announced in the coming months.
Move together in movement classes designed for all ages and all abilities
Learn new creative tools and practices for socially-engaged artmaking and creative community engagement
Experience and contribute to Dance Exchange projects at the intersection of artmaking and climate
Meet other artists, thinkers, leaders, and community members invested in the power and potential of artmaking and creative engagement within the climate movement.
In an effort to gather a community of artists, climate workers, and community members diverse in lived experience, geographic location, expertise/discipline, and experience within the climate movement, we are requiring applications for this year’s Institute.
NEW EMPTY HANDS MUSIC VIDEO RELEASE: “Granddaughter’s Eyes” is a powerful call to action on climate change. Through evocative storytelling, this song and music video urges us to see the world through the eyes of future generations and inspires us to make small changes in our daily lives to help preserve the planet for posterity.
Some lyrics from the song:
We’re running out of breath, cuz we’re cutting down the pines, running out of water, so we’re cutting in the lines 7.7, 8 billion and the 9, human beings watching the land sink while the water rises
About the artist: Nimo has performed and shared his heartfelt messages of kindness, gratitude and love in over 20 countries from hundreds of schools, refugee camps and hospitals to international conferences, prisons and music festivals. His songs, music videos and message, have traversed the world to over 100 million viewers through MTV, YouTube, Tony Robbins’ events, the BBC Channel and more. Nimo continues to offer his music and performances as a labor of love, at no charge.
Note : Une version en français de cet article est disponible sur : Français
(Jacek Smolicki)
The ultimate question I’m asking is how can we move away from soundwalk as a kind of framed aesthetic experience or artistic experience and turn it into an existential practice or basically something that is just ingrained in our everyday life and we don’t have to frame it anymore. It’s just basically part of our way of living.
(Claude Schryer)
Can you give an example of that?
(Jacek Smolicki)
An academic example would be the concepts developed by Steven Feld, acoustemology, where basically listening, a kind of sonic way of being in the world is part of your culture, part of existence. You don’t tell yourself, okay, I will listen to the world more carefully from now for another hour, and then I can just return back to my everyday life but you basically just keep listening, right? A kind of sonic sensitivity is one of the most important ways of understanding the world as opposed to being pushed to the background and only lifted up during those kinds of frame situations such as a soundwalk.
(Claude Schryer)
I’ve been sound walking in an analytical way, so I’ll try to make sense of the sounds and where they are and what they’re about but there’s also an absorption factor where you allow the sounds to speak to you in their own language, right? As opposed to sort of rationally figuring them out. So, if we stop here and listen, what are you hearing?
(Jacek Smolicki)
I hear a coexistence of culture and nature and at the same time a kind of friction between two realms that in fact are just one realm and we kind of try to maybe separate them. We talked a little bit about this positionality and we hear the whistle of the train. From one perspective, we heard some people here referring to that sound as being very calming and reassuring, but if you think of indigenous people, that sound might mean a completely different thing. It’s a form of bordering and creating, some kind of a division, of cutting the land and deciding how the land is to be traversed and utilized. So it definitely has a violent connotation if we look from that perspective and if we listen from that perspective. I think that this is some kind of sensitivity that I’m aiming at, also, while teaching, to be able to also take that thought into consideration when we try to value or kind of assign value to different sounds. I think Dylan Robinson is talking about oscillation. I think he calls it to be able to constantly oscillate, to move from one way of understanding sound to another. And basically by doing that it destabilizing certain certainties that characterizes our way of listening and, and by doing that, becoming open to those other understandings and perceptions…
(Claude Schryer)
And asking questions. You know, we were on a panel together a few days ago (Stetson University) when we were asking the question, how can listening help the world that is in crisis? and it’s an open-ended question because with listening everybody has their own way of listening, but there are certainly deeper ways of listening that we can learn and unlearn as we work our way through these issues.
(Jacek Smolicki)
Exactly and that we’ve been talking a lot about hope. We’ve been talking a lot about how this openness is almost inherently good. I have that feeling. People talk about if we open up our listening and if we invite other perspectives, then we are doing something good. But I think that opening comes with certain responsibilities too, right? I like to think of it in a way that the more open we become to those different perspectives, the more troubled, actually, we should become more concerned rather than content and calm, so there’s this disruptive aspect to listening that Hildegard Westerkamp has been writing about, but as we open ourselves, as we include other perspectives, we at the same time disrupted something, right? That we at the same time should be calling ourselves to action and becoming more responsible. So, there’s some kind of an obligation I think that should follow that act of opening and deepening our listening.
(Claude Schryer)
I agree. Thank you for this moment. We will listen again.
*
This episode with artist Jacek Smolicki was recorded on Friday March 24th, 2023 at 8.44 am at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
It’s a soundwalk about soundwalking but also about the role of acoustic ecology in the ecological crisis.
After completing our first 5 minute conversation (e113 part 1) we heard a passing train and continued our conversation, which is this episode (part 2).
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Children and Youth Artists’ Grief Deck! Artists’ Literacies Institute.
*
Jacek Smolicki (born during martial law in Kraków) is a cross-disciplinary artist, designer, researcher and educator. His work brings temporal, existential and critical dimensions to listening, recording and archiving practices and technologies in diverse contexts.
Besides working with historical archives, media, and heritage, Smolicki develops other modes of sensing, recording, and mediating stories and signals from specific sites, scales, and temporalities. His work is manifested through soundwalks, soundscape compositions, diverse forms of writing, site-responsive performances, experimental para-archives, and audio-visual installations.
He has performed, published, and exhibited internationally (e.g. In-Sonora Madrid, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, AudioArt Kraków, Ars Electronica, Linz, and Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo). His broad scope of site-responsive artistic and research work includes projects concerned with the soundscapes of the Swedish Arctic Circle, the Canadian Pacific Coast, the world’s tallest wooden radio mast in Gliwice, the UFO testimonies from the Archive for the Unexplained in Sweden, the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków, the former sites of the Yugoslav Wars, Madrid’s busking culture, and Alfred Nobel’s factory complex in Stockholm, among many other places.
In 2017 he completed his PhD in Media and Communications from the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University where he was a member of Living Archives, a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council.
Between 2020-2023 Smolicki pursues an international postdoctorate funded by the Swedish Research Council. Located at Linköping University in Sweden, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and Harvard, USA, his research explores the history and prospects of field recording and soundwalking practices from the perspective of arts, environmental humanities, and philosophy of technology.
In 2022/2023 he is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard.
He is also an associate scholar at the Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence at Uppsala University. From January 2020 he is a member of BioMe, a research project that investigates ethical implications of AI technologies on everyday life realms. Smolicki explores sonic capture cultures and the impact of AI technologies on human and other-than-human voices.
He is a co-founder of Walking Festival of Sound, a transdisciplinary and nomadic event exploring the critical and reflective role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings.
Since 2008 Smolicki has been working on On-Going Project, a systematic experimentation with various recording techniques and technologies leading to a multifaceted para-archive of contemporary everyday life, culture, and environment. The On-Going Project includes Minuting, a record of public soundscapes performed daily ever since July 2010, for which he received the main prize at the Society for Artistic Research conference in 2022.
The post e113 soundwalk (part 2) – how can we deepen our listening? appeared first on conscient. conscient is a bilingual blog and podcast (French or English) by audio artist Claude Schryer that explores how arts and culture contribute to environmental awareness and action.
———-
About the Concient Podcast from Claude Schryer
The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a series of conversations about art, conscience and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). The language of the guest determines the language of the podcast. Episode notes are translated but not individual interviews.
I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.
The term “conscient” is defined as “being aware of one’s surroundings, thoughts and motivations”. My touchstone for the podcast is episode 1, e01 terrified, based on an essay I wrote in May 2019, where I share my anxiety about the climate crisis and my belief that arts and culture can play a critical role in raising public awareness about environmental issues. The conscient podcast / balado conscient follows up on my http://simplesoundscapes.ca (2016-2019) project: 175, 3-minute audio and video field recordings that explore mindful listening.
season 1 (may – october 2020) : environmental awareness and action Season 1 (May to October 2020) explored how the arts contribute to environmental awareness and action. I produced 3 episodes in French and 15 in English. The episodes cover a wide range of content, including activism, impact measurement, gaming, arts funding, cross-sectoral collaborations, social justice, artistic practices, etc. Episodes 8 to 17 were recorded while I was at the Creative Climate Leadership USA course in Arizona in March 2020 (led by Julie”s Bicycle). Episode 18 is a compilation of highlights from these conversations.
season 2 (march – august 2021 ) : reality and ecological grief Season 2 (March 2021 ) explores the concept of reality and is about accepting reality, working through ecological grief and charting a path forward. The first episode of season 2 (e19 reality) mixes quotations from 28 authors with field recordings from simplesoundscapes and from my 1998 soundscape composition, Au dernier vivant les biens. One of my findings from this episode is that “I now see, and more importantly, I now feel in my bones, “the state of things as they actually exist”, without social filters or unsustainable stories blocking the way”. e19 reality touches upon 7 topics: our perception of reality, the possibility of human extinction, ecological anxiety and ecological grief, hope, arts, storytelling and the wisdom of indigenous cultures. The rest of season 2 features interviews with thought leaders about their responses and reactions to e19 reality.
season 3 (october 2021 – february 2022 ) : radical listening Season 3 was about radical listening : listening deeply without passing judgment, knowing the truth and filtering out the noise and opening attention to reality and responding to what needs to be done. The format is similar the first podcast format I did in 2016 with the simplesoundscapes project, which was to ‘speak my mind’ and ‘think out loud’. I start this season with a ‘soundscape composition’, e63 a case study (part 1) and e64 a case study (part 2), a bilingual speculative fiction radio play, set in an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada’. It concluded with a soundscape composition ‘Winter Diary Revisited’.
season 4 (1 january – 31 december 2023) : sounding modernity
About
I’ve been retired from the Canada Council for the Arts since September 15, 2020 where I served as a senior strategic advisor in arts granting (2016-2020) and manager of the Inter-Arts Office (1999-2015). My focus in (quasi) retirement is environmental issues within my area of expertise in arts and culture, in particular in acoustic ecology. I”m open to become involved in projects that align with my values and that move forward environmental concerns. Feel free to email me for a conversation :
