It’s Freezing in LA!

07/09/2020

The critically acclaimed independent magazine with a fresh take on climate change.

Started in 2018, It’s Freezing in LA! is a collective of artists, scientists, writers and thinkers dedicated to slow environmental journalism. This July, Editor Martha Dillon and Co-Creative Director Nina Carter joined maat to lead a three-day virtual workshop series on climate literature on the theme of Solastalgia, in the context of programme maat Mode 2020 and the Mode Diaries initiative.

The project collects essays and writing that touch on environmental themes from all over the world, looking for work that unpacks the complexity of the crisis, putting serious, fresh thought into the issues at hand. The aim is to produce pieces of writing that are bright, interesting and provoking, adding richness and texture to typical discussions of climate in the media.

The project also utilises vibrant, original illustration alongside the pieces of writing. Each issue, printed twice a year, features hand drawn work by different artists and illustrators from around the world. IFLA! publishes illustrations to help make the writing more accessible and engaging, emphasising different ideas and perspectives and acting as a complementary method of communication.

In the six issues since conception, IFLA! has covered a huge range of ideas and topics. From the dangers of Big Energy to interviews with world-famous artists, from the history of "witches" blamed for bad weather to the exploration of the implications of the lunar expedition on the climate movement, each issue looks to illuminate the diverse and difficult influences of climatic changes on our lives. By picking apart the issue piece-by-piece, the aim is to give a clearer understanding of the whole problem.

Writing for a Substantially Altered World is an online climate literature workshop by the magazine It's Freezing in LA! on the theme of Solastalgia. Developed over three sessions in June 2020, the workshop was conceived and coordinated by Martha Dillon (editor) and Nina Carter (co-creative director), with the special participations of Aché Atta-Boateng (biologist), Billie Manning (poet), Charlotte Ager (illustrator), Elizabeth Joyce (biologist), Lizzie Roeble (evolutionary biologist), Nicolas Baird (palaeontologist) and Phoebe Nightingale (writer).

Based on diary-keeping as a form of writing, the Mode Diaries initiative creates a field of interpretative potentialities within the context of maat Mode 2020, a public, experimental and participatory exhibition and activity programme under the motto “Prototyping the museum”. This is the scope that justifies and enables the twisting of the meaning commonly attributed to the term “diary” by transforming what’s individualised into collective, private into public, singular into plural, etc.