PLATFORM continue to focus on the issues of corporate responsibility for oil conflict in the Niger Delta through their project Remember Saro-Wiwa.  The Guardian‘s extensive story on a new report by the social and environmental activists highlights the consequences of Shell paying off militia groups to stop them damaging pipelines.  This funds and stimulates conflict with other groups.  Shell periodically changes sides, thus exacerbating the situation.  But Shell are proud that none of this disrupts production, regardless of the number of people who die as a consequence: at least 60 in one incident. 

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

Janek Simon, Niszczarka

Since the last symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art held at CEU in February 2008, which took as its subject the Operaist dilemma of ‘Exit or Activism?’ and examined Paulo Virno’s idea of ‘exit’ as the ultimate form of resistance, the world has witnessed an intensifying fight for resources under the Arctic, the rocketing of food and oil prices, the Russian gas crisis, and the systemic failure of international financial institutions. These ‘hard realities’ have caused a switch from concerns of immaterial labour to recognition of the ‘new materiality’ of current circumstances.

This recent turn has been addressed by theorist Slavoj Žižek, who notes that while in the last decades it was ‘trendy to talk about the dominant role of intellectual labour in our post-industrial societies, today materiality appears in an almost vengeful way in all its aspects, from a future struggle for ever-diminishing resources (food, water, energy, minerals) to the degradation of the environment.’ The 2009 edition of Sustainability and Contemporary Art therefore brings together artists, theorists and environmental activists to investigate the implications of ‘hard realities’ and ‘new materiality’ for political action, artistic theory and practice, and sustainable living in the 21st century.

SPEAKERS

Marina Grzinić, Sustainability and Capital

Marina Grzinić is a philosopher, artist and theoretician. She is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Institute of Fine Arts, Post Conceptual Art Practices and a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy in Ljubljana. She is a founder of Reartikulacija (Ljubljana) and recently published the book Re-Politicizing art, Theory, Representation and New Media Technology.

Tamás St.Auby, The Subsistence Level Standard Project 1984 W.

Tamás St.Auby was born in 1944 and lives in Budapest. In 1968 he founded IPUT (International Parallel Union of Telecommunications). He was censored for his artistic radicalism, promotion of art strikes and questioning of ideology and forced to leave Hungary in the mid-1970s. Since returning from Geneva in 1991, St.Auby has lectured at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts.

Tadzio Müller, It’s economic growth, stupid! On climate change, mad-eyed moderates and realistic radicals

Tadzio Müller lives in Berlin, where he is active, after many years of being a counterglobalist summit-groupie, in the emerging climate action movement. Having escaped the clutches of (academic) wage labour, he is currently writing a report about ‘green capitalism’ for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and otherwise doing odd translation jobs. He is also an editor of Turbulence – Ideas for Movement

www.turbulence.org.uk

Janek Simon, How to Make a Digital Handwatch at Home

Janek Simon was born in 1977. Studied sociology and psychology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. His artistic activity began around 2001. He is author of interactive installations, videos, objects. Simon takes inspiration from computer games, Internet and the archive (in its multiple meanings).

Sebastjan Leban, Silent Weapon of Extermination

Sebastjan Leban is an artist and theoretician from Ljubljana. His artistic practice involves the collaboration with Stas Kleindienst, the group Trie and the group Reartikulacija. He is one of the editors of the journal Reartikulacija and has exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions, participated in many symposiums and lectures and published texts in several different publications.

Alina Asavei, A Sustainable Aesthetics: Contextual and Ethical Beauty

Alina Asavei is from Romania and currently she is a PhD candidate in Aesthetics (Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Budapest). She works principally in the areas of social philosophy, cultural studies, art and disability, the politics of aesthetics, forms of artistic engagement during and after totalitarian regimes. She published articles in the domain of Art History, Aesthetics and Social and Cultural History.

Alan Watt, Sustainability in the Face of Hard Reality

Alan Watt is a lecturer in environmental philosophy and the development of environmental thought at the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at Central European University.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes The Environmental Impact of Contemporary Art

Maja and Reuben Fowkes are curators and art historians who deal with issues of memory, ecology and translocal exchange.  They have curated and written extensively on the issue of contemporary art and sustainability.

http:// www.translocal.org

The programme of the Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art is devised by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Translocal.org) and co-organised with the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy and the Centre for Arts and Culture at Central European University.

For further information and booking details please see the project website:

www.translocal.org/sustainability

Deadline October 1 2009

NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN
Wooloo.org is organizing the people of Copenhagen to open their homes to 5.000 environmental activists during the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December.

Utilizing this large-scale human meeting as its exhibition platform, the NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN festival invites artists and curators to submit work proposals.

New Life Happenings. Propose a happening or event for the thousands of NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN hosts and guests during the UN Conference. Your concept should involve collective action and will be implemented alongside works by artist groups Superflex (DK), Signa (DK/A) and Raketa (SE) among others.

To learn more about NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN and to apply for participation, go to:http://www.wooloo.org/festival


PARTICIPATE OR DIE
From December 7th to 18th, 2009, representatives from 192 nations will gather in Denmark for the UN Climate Change Conference to reach an agreement on a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In addition to the large number of official UN delegates, thousands of activists and Non-Governmental Organizations are bound for the conference which has been called: “Humanity’s last chance to combat a climate problem that is now all but overwhelming.” (Tim Flannery, Scientist and environmental activist).

However, there will not be enough hotel space to accommodate most of these visitors, as all hotels in Copenhagen and the surrounding area (including Sweden) have already been booked for the official delegates. Furthermore, even if they were available, many visitors from all over the world would not be able to afford them anyway.

In order to help solve this substantial problem, NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is running a volunteer-based campaign to get private Danish homes to open their door to the thousands of visitors. Through street campaigns and collaborations with local organizations, NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN aims to reach this goal by November.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE?
At the end of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth”, Gore lists ten simple life rules to combat global warming. These include using less hot water, recycling more, etc. While Wooloo.org supports this sustainable thinking, we also believe that the real problem will not be solved by asking individuals to modify their behavior but only through addressing the wrongs of a global economic system that thrives on exploiting natural resources and people.

Seen in this way, the climate crisis is not just a threat but also an opportunity: The opportunity to create transnational commitment around radical re-thinkings of a destructive system. The first step to create such change, is to develop alternatives to the current system and our existing cultural codes.

That is our mission with NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN.

By asking artists to develop happenings and reflections for a new life – and then request that thousands of participants implement them – Wooloo.org aims beyond the traditional art exhibition to become an active organizer of experiments in civic engagement and social empowerment.


PEOPLE BEHIND
NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN is organized by the artists-run community Wooloo.org.

Founded in 2002, Wooloo.org is today used by more than 13.000 artists from over 140 countries. Wooloo.org projects have been presented in such places as: Artists Space (USA), White Box (USA), Basel Kunsthalle (Switzerland) and the Third Guangzhou Triennial (China).

For more information, see http://www.wooloo.org and http://www.wooloo.org/festival

For further questions about NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN or Wooloo.org, please contact Martin Rosengaard; email: contact@wooloo.org / phone: +45 6171 6101, Wooloo.org, Pastursvej 46, DK-1778 Copenhagen V.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Maja and Reuben Fowkes interviewed in Antennae Magazine – the whole issue can be downloaded from their site as a pdf

Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, was founded in September 2006 by Giovanni Aloi, a London-based lecturer in history of art and media studies. The Journal combines a heightened level of academic scrutiny of animals in visual culture, with a less formal and more experimental format designed to cross the boundaries of academic knowledge, in order to appeal to diverse audiences including artists and the general public alike.

Ultimately, the Journal provides a platform and encourages the overlap of the professional spheres of artists, scientists, environmental activists, curators, academics, and general readers. It does so through an editorial mix that combines academic writing, interviews, informative articles, and discussions with an illustrated format, in order to grant accessibility to a wider readership.

via Interview about Art and Sustainability « Sustainability and Contemporary Art.