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Climate Collective, VI

 

Illustration: Lisa Hartje Moura.

 

Climate Emergency > Emergence  

 

maat Climate Collective: 
T. J. Demos

Chair and Chief Curator

Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli, Paulo Tavares 

 

Bringing urgent focus to climate emergency, maat Climate Collective energises critical analyses and creative proposals in moving beyond catastrophism and toward the emergence of environmentally sustainable and socially just futures. Interdisciplinary in breadth and international in scope, our programme assembles diverse cultural practitioners working at the intersection of experimental arts and political ecology in a year-long project of collective deliberation. The goal: to unveil horizons of thought and action vital for a liveable future, dedicated to unpacking the complexities – socio-economic, juridico-political, techno-environmental and cultural – of climate transformation. 

 

Rather than viewing climate emergency as uniquely situated in the not-yet, we insist on connecting present anxieties over climate breakdown to long histories of socio-environmental violence. Preparing the ground of near-future collapse, past formations of colonial extractivism and racial capitalism have already multiplied emergencies and continue to do so in our present. They also widen the scope of emergency beyond the narrow focus on atmospheric carbon, expanding it to complex entanglements of socio-political and techno-economic climates within and beyond the human. 

 

Among our central questions: 

What reparatory climate futures are necessary once we adopt greater historical sensitivity to socio-environmental emergencies? 

How might these manifest through new frameworks of ecologies of care and mutual aid (framed as solidarity, not charity)? 

In what ways do technologies of sensing not only observe climate transformation, but construct objects of knowledge, science, and politics, and reimagine relationships with more-than-human beings? 

How and why does climate justice require not simply decarbonisation but decolonisation? 

How do the anti-racial-capitalist politics of abolition – which articulates social justice demands for the end of policing, mass incarceration, and of militarisation more broadly – extend to ecological and multispecies concerns? 

Enlivening a public arena of collective debate, Climate Emergency > Emergence asks how we can move from "climate emergency" (the catastrophe of Earth systems breakdown as much as failed sociopolitical arrangements) to "climate emergence" (generating new forms of life founded upon social justice and environmental wellbeing). Initiating our collective study from the context of maat and Portuguese histories of colonial-ecological intersections, the project expands across narratives from around the world over a nine-month period. Integral to our initiative will be to explore how and why socio-environmental approaches that foreground social justice, decolonial thinking, and critiques of racial capitalism matter to climate policy. 

Climate Collective series of talks
permanently available online

 

CLIMATE EMERGENCY > EMERGENCE, AN INTRODUCTION 
with T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch

 

CLIMATE EMERGENCY > EMERGENCE, A DISCUSSION
with T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
Moderated by Margarida Mendes
watch

 

ENVIRONMENTAL MEMORY
with Boaventura Monjane, Joana Roque de Pinho, João Ruivo, Júlia Seixas, proTEJO and Movimento SOS Serra d’Arga, invited by Margarida Mendes
watch

 

CLIMATE REPARATIONS
with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
and T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch

 

WRETCHED OF THE EARTH AND RACIAL JUSTICE
Ashish Ghadiali and Penny Wangari-Jones
and T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch

 

ECOLOGIES OF REPAIR 
with Imani Jacqueline Brown and Carolina Caycedo
and T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch

 

THINGS FALL APART – A NEW ETHICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONS
with Ama Josephine Budge and Tabita Rezaire, and Molemo Moiloa and Susan Schuppli
watch

 

COURT FOR INTERGENERATIONAL CLIMATE CRIMES
with Jonas Staal and Radha D’Souza, and T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch 

 

LISTENING TO ICE
with Mohd Farooq Azam and Faiza Ahmad Khan, and T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch

 

CLIMATE EMERGENCY > EMERGENCE, WRAP-UP
by the Climate Collective: T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
watch

 

Climate Collective series of videos
temporarily available online

 

THIRZA JEAN CUTHAND: RECLAMATION 
Shown on maat ext. Cinema from 30 April to 27 May 2021
more

 

FILIPA CÉSAR: THE TROUBLE WITH PALMS (REPÉRAGE)
Shown on maat ext. Cinema from 29 May to 25 June 2021
more

 

CAROLINA CAYCEDO: WE RIVER
Showing on maat ext. Cinema from 30 June to 24 September 2021
more

 

JONAS STAAL: CLIMATE PROPAGANDAS, VIDEO STUDY
Showing on maat ext. Cinema from 1 October to 28 October 2021
more

 

ALEXANDER GLUSTROM: MOSSVILLE. WHEN GREAT TREES FALL
Showing on maat ext. Cinema from 30 November to 30 December 2021
more

 

RADHA D'SOUZA AND JONAS STAAL: COURT FOR INTERGENERATIONAL CLIMATE CRIMES, VIDEO STUDY
Showing on maat ext. Cinema from 16 November 2021 to 16 January 2022
more

 

AUDRIUS STONYS: WOMAN AND THE GLACIER
Showing on maat ext. Cinema from 13 January to 13 February 2022
more

 

"maat Explorations" is a programme framework featuring an ongoing series of exhibitions, public and educational projects delving into the multi-faceted subject of environmental transformation from various scholarly and experimental vantage points – it brings philosophical and political perspectives forward, as well as sociocultural and technological investigations interwoven in speculative and critical practices in the arts and design at large. 

 

Central to the discursive and critical effort of "maat Explorations" is the establishment of the Climate Collective, a rotating group of experts in the expanded field of contemporary art, design and technology that will each year propose a refreshed vision on the connection between creative practices, ecological thought and politics. 

For the launch and first year of activities that take the forms of various on site and online events, from talks to fieldwork, the collective is made of four members, who bring critical perspectives from various academic and geographic angles: T. J. Demos (USA), Molemo Moiloa (South Africa), Susan Schuppli (UK), Paulo Tavares (Brazil). 

 

The Climate Emergency > Emergence public programme initiative energises critical analyses and creative proposals in moving beyond catastrophism and toward the emergence of environmentally sustainable futures. Interdisciplinary in breadth and international in scope, the programme is conceptualised by the newly-formed Climate Collective, chaired by T. J. Demos, and geared toward assembling diverse cultural practitioners working at the intersection of experimental arts and political ecology.