Climate Changes

Laughing Matters

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Subhankar Banerjee, who’s recent book Arctic Voices, highlights the oil business in the North from the perspectives of the people who live there, has written a piece for ClimateStoryTellers.org on humour.

Arctic Voices was well received,

“One of the great strengths of Arctic Voices is that it shows how Alaska and the Arctic are tied to the places where most of us live. In this impassioned book, Banerjee shows a situation so serious that it has created a movement, where “voices of resistance are gathering, are getting louder and louder.” May his heartfelt efforts magnify them. The climate changes that are coming have hit soon and hard in the Arctic, and their consequences may be starkest there.”—Ian Frazier, The New York Review of Books

In the piece Laughing Matters he highlights the long history and importance of humour as a means to shame otherwise impervious politicians.

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.
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IMAGINE 2020: Summer LAB. Art, climate change and sustainable development

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

IMAGINE 2020, Art and Climate Change, was created to increase awareness about the causes and effects of climate change and advocates changes to the cultural sector and society in genral. One of the network activities is the Summer Lab, in this event they bring together artists and professionals from diverse disciplines. The first edition took place in Montpellier, France, where 35 artists and scientists from all over Europe came together over 4 days.

This year, the Summer Lab is taking place in Torres Vedras (Portugal), from September 5th to 9th, 2012. In its 2nd edition, international artists, scientists and entrepreneurs will interact and share their creative and professional experiences during the discussion and development of a concrete project proposal that shares a vision for a low carbon future development of communities.

For more information, please visit http://www.imagine2020.eu/

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

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Success for New Life Copenhagen Festival during COP15

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Success for art festival during COP15

NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN was a great success and expects to continue during COP16 in Mexico

During COP15, the untraditional art festival NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN has hosted the free hospitality of more than 3.000 climate guests from 108 different nationalities. Activists, grassroots, scientists, diplomats and delegates have lived on couches and in guest rooms in Danish homes for the past two weeks. This vast cultural meeting makes NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN the largest free private housing project worldwide in relation to an international summit or conference.

The social success of the summit

The organizers behind the project, Wooloo.org, is very satisfied with the outcome. The large cultural meeting went by and large without problems, and the reactions from the participants have been overwhelmingly positive.  Wooloo.org states:

Most of the hosts chose to spend a lot of time with their guests. The hosts showed them Copenhagen, discusse climate politics, cultural differences, food and so much more. They sat and talked all night, and the younger participants went out at night – some of them even started dating. Others have already made plans to visit their guests in their home country next year.

A social experiment

The objective of the art festival was always to create something more than a free hospitality project. Wooloo.org says:

Instead of inviting artists to create art pjeces for a traditional museum, we have chosen guest hospitality and meetings between people as our exhibition platform. The purpose of the festival is to create a foundation for new ways of living together. Individual solutionas are not enough. As a society we need to live of lives radically differen if we are to succeed with the climate changes.

With this objective as a starting point, the artist group Superflex asked participants to make an absurd choice to decide if they wanted a climate-friendly death if they were to die during the summit. Signa made a special guest- and host book for all participants where particpants could evaluate each other’s lifestyle patterns, and the activist duo The YesMen encouraged everybody to take a pledge to never drink Coca-Cola again.

The success continues in Mexico

Already now, the world is looking ahead to the next climate summit in Mexico (COP16). And the organization behind is already very positive about implementing NEW LIFE as a way of welcoming climate guests and once again examine new ways of living together by the hand of a series of challenging choices and happenings developed by Wooloo.org and other artists.

NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is the largest private and free accommodation project worldwide ever in relation to an international summit. NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is funded by the Danish Arts Council, Nordic Culture Point, the Danish Arts Foundation, the City of Copenhagen, People’s Climate Action, Tryg Vesta and the Danish Society for Nature Conservation.

For more information:  www.newlifecopenhagen.com / www.wooloo.org

Climate changes: Steve Waters interview

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Many had considered climate change an impossible subject to dramatise. But two new plays that opened at the Bush in May proved them wrong.

Steve Waters talks to Robert Butler about ‘The Contingency Plan’, his double-bill of plays about climate change, and how they were inspired by James Lovelock, the 1953 floods, and the Transition Town Handbook.

http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=2009122_59406680&view=

To coincide with the UN Conference in Copenhagen, Radio 3 also broadcasts a version of ‘The Contingency Plan’ (this Sunday, 8pm) and two readings of the play, with the original cast, will be produced at the Bush on 15 and 18 December.

MAMMUT MAGAZINE #4 :: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

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MAMMUT MAGAZINE #4 :: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

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WORKING TITLE: Solastalgia

What happens when the climate changes around you but you are still in the same location?

The fourth issue of Mammut Magazine will investigate the effects of climate change on the human psyche, focusing on a new definition of sadness called “solastalgia.” Coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, it refers to a form of homesickness felt while still at home, particularly as it refers to the perceived change in one’s home environment caused by climate change. A parallel of sorts to nostalgia, solastalgia was created by combining the Latin words solacium, meaning comfort, and algia, meaning pain.

Albrecht created the term in 2003 after interviewing scores of Australians, many of whom noted that they felt a deep sense of loss as the landscape changed around them and familiar plants and animals were gone. “They no longer feel like they know the place they’ve lived for decades,” Albrecht said in a 2007 Wired interview.

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Mammut Magazine is looking for essays and artwork that:

>>> deals with, affirms or denies the idea of solastalgia

>>> investigates how we define our sense of belonging through our environment

>>> confronts how we are (or will be) affected individually and collectively by these changes.

We welcome contributions from all fields, while keeping in mind the magazine’s general focus on art and the environment.

The fourth issue of Mammut is being guest edited by Ian Garrett, the executive director of The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. https://www.sustainablepractice.org

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IMPORTANT DATES

>>> Proposal deadline: January 15, 2010

Please send a short outline of your project and/or images to mammutmag@gmail.com

>>> If chosen, the final submission deadline will be March 1, 2010

>>> Anticipated release date: late April / Early May 2010

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For more about Mammut Magazine, please visit http://www.mammutmagazine.org

New Life Copenhagen: hospitality as art

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I am soon to be assigned to a guest house in Copenhagen by the remarkable New Life Copenhagen art project. For five days people I don’t know, who don’t know me, will put me up durng my stay in Copenhagen.

Everything I hear from them, while I wait, makes me more and more admiring of this enterprise.

The Danes feel they have a reputation for being an unhospitable place. New Life Copenhagen has decided to turn this reputation on its head with a phenomenal act of generosity, opening the doors of their homes to 3,000 activists, NGO workers and delegates who are arriving in Denmark over the coming weeks to attend the pivotal COP15 conference.  It’s a spirit of openness you can only hoped will be matched by the governmental delegates.

In this act alone,  Woloo.org’s  Sixten Kai Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard, who created New Life Copenhagen may have already created the most significant artwork to align itself with the COP15 process:

The explain themselves: Instead of inviting artists to contribute art for a traditional museum exhibition, we have chosen to utilize hospitality and the human encounter as an exhibition platform. The purpose of the festival is to create a breeding ground for alternative ways of living together. Individual solutions are not enough. In order to stop climate changes, we have to rethink our way of life collectively.

The artists Superflex, Signa and Marisa Olson are also creating work as part of New Life Copenhagen. Olson will host a live event at Copenhagen’s City Square, Signa are going to produce a guest book in which we can all evaluate each others’ lifestyles, and Superflex are going to ask all of us to commit to a climate-friendly burial in the case that we die during our visit to Copenhagen.

Which is one of those committments I kind of hope I’m not going to have to live up to.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology