Conference — alternativestocrisis

online programme

cloud patterns known as von Kármán’s Vortices, caused by the air wrapping around tall islands of Cape Verde. image: NASA

Click here to book your place

Monday 10th 2pm-4

Monday 10th May - 2pm - 4pm (BST)

Weaving transformative alternatives

A panel hosted by core members of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Ashish Kothari, Vasna Ramasar, Alejandra Jiménez and Shristee Bajpai explores how transformative indigenous and non-indigenous grassroot alternatives are weaving sustainable worlds in the global south. This event will be an inspiring demonstration of hope through alternative ways of seeing and doing. The GTA draws from its vast, global network to introduce inspiring and radical alternatives related to sustainability and climate justice.

In sharing the practice of weaving community connections and organising global dialogues the GTA demonstrates applicable, real-life, real-time examples of processes that demonstrate alternative approaches to the Eurocentric discourse on climate change, giving room to move beyond the patriarchal, colonial and capitalist narratives towards global climate justice.

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Wednesday 12th May 5pm-7pm (BST)
Climate Games Creative forms of resistance part I.

Jay Jordan and Isa Frémeaux of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) join us from Europe’s longest running land occupation, the ZAD (Zone à défendre) along with award-winning author T.J. Demos and founder of the Centre of Creative Ecologies, (University of California). As we approach COP26 in Glasgow 2021, this conversation will revisit the activist responses to COP21 and consider how the visual culture of environmental justice activism has changed in the years since the creation of the Paris Agreement.

During the signing of Paris Agreement at COP21 in Dec 2015, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) staged the Climate Games, the greatest disobedient action-adventure game in the world - mobilizing of over 100 artists and activist groups that carried out over 200 acts of disobedience and disruption throughout the streets of Paris and across Europe without central coordination.

Saturday 15th May 2pm (BST)

Interpsecies Listening

Interspecies Listening - live stream from Newton Park Campus

The transdisciplinary project, ‘Interspecies listening’ combines new techniques in bioacoustic monitoring with listening practices associated with acoustic ecology, sound art and ecomusicology. At Newton Park campus, hydrophones will be used to listen to and monitor underwater species, including the European protected species, the Great Crested Newt. For Climate Campus, the interdisciplinary research team -Dr Ian Thornhill (Reader in Ecology and Conservation) Amanda Bayley (Professor of Music) Research Fellow Kathy Hinde (audiovisual artist) will share a live, deep listening experience from underwater microphones. These listening experiences will be interspersed with an introduction to their collaborative research into bioacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, ecomusicology, and practices of listening for developing ecoliteracy.

Saturday 15th May 3pm-5pm (BST)

The Manifesto of Rural Futurism

Curator, writer, researcher and educator, Leandro Pisano considers the current state of rural communities and their visions for the future. Drawing on extensive research, organising cultural events and conversations in small towns across Southern Italy and beyond, Pisano, alongside Beatrice Ferrara has written a Manifesto of Rural Futurism. Artist Robert Luzar joins Leandro as together they investigate ways to use culture - and in particular sound art and technocultures - to better understand the complexity of rural areas and to challenge discourses of capitalism that tend to marginalise these rural territories.

Monday 17th May 10am-12pm (BST)

Degrowth - a good life for all.
Creative forms of resistance part II.

Vincent Liegey is an engineer, interdisciplinary researcher, author and spokesperson for the French degrowth movement. Degrowth is an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction. The degrowth movement of activists and researchers advocates for societies that prioritize social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy. Degrowth means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

5pm-7pm (BS

Monday 17th May 5pm-7pm (BST)

Everything’s coming together
while everything’s falling apart.

Creative forms of resistance part III.

Artist and filmmaker, Oliver Ressler produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives. Ressler will discuss his long term work documenting the activities and moments of mobilisation of the climate movement. This session will be accompanied by screenings of a selection of films from the series Everything's coming together while everything's falling apart. The title refers to a situation in which all the technology needed to end the age of fossil fuel already exists. Whether the present ecological, social and economic crisis will be overcome is primarily a question of political power. The story of this ongoing film project may turn out to be a story of the beginning of the climate revolution, the moment when popular resistance began to reconfigure the world. The project follows the climate movement in its struggles to dismantle an economic system heavily dependent on fossil fuels. It records key events for the climate movement, bringing together many situations, contexts, voices and experiences.

Tuesday 18th May 4pm-6pm (BST)

Environmental justice & climate balance.

As founder and curator of General Ecologies at London’s Serpentine Galleries Lucia Pietrouisti is uniquely placed to give insight into the space given to ecology within institutions. Here with Dr Youba Sokona, Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), their interdisciplinary conversation at the intersections of policy, governance, climate science and art and ecology will explore approaches to environmental justice and climate balance.

Wednesday 19th May 10am-12pm (BST)

Indigenous perspectives of the end of the world

Presenting research from her recent anthropology Indigenous Perspectives At The End of The World Anthropologist Dr Rosalyn Bold explains the general principles of these perspectives and unpicks the alternative relations with and status of creator and landscape spirits presented within these cultures. Respect for the unseen spirits articulates sustainable environmental relations governed by principles of asking before we take and taking respectfully. Together in conversation with Multiple-award winning documentary filmmaker Sara Penrhyn Jones they will discuss philosophical alternatives to challenge the varying degrees of the impact of extractivism, consequences of climate change, and resulting breakdown of social relations.

Thursday 20th May 2pm-4pm (BST)

Submerged knowledges

As the curatorial work table for the proposed biennial on the permanent theme of water, in the city of Chandigarh, India, curators Hicham Khalidi (Director of the Jan van Eyck Academie, NL), Shaunak Mahbubani (curator), Zasha Colah (curator) Sharmila Samant (artist) and Ben Parry (artist, curator) will discuss alternative , decolonial and sustainable models of biennale in a post-pandemic world. They will discuss the concept of submerged knowledges and Metaphoric 3rd Pole as a site for artistic engagement with the climate crisis.

Monday 24th 4pm-6pm (BS

Monday 24th May 4pm-6pm (BST)

Meteorologicial mobilities

Curator Marianna Tsionki presents Meteorological Mobilities, an exhibition examining climate induced mass migration. Due to open at Apex Art NYC in May 2020, it was instead exhibited virtually. Insights into the role of the curatorial in facilitating new methods of engagement and introducing Art Theory into the public realm are dissected within the conversations around this impactful, exciting exhibition. In conversation, Marianna will reflect on the films of Ursula Biemann. Two of Biemann’s inspirational films, Deep Weather (2012) and Acoustic Ocean (2018) will be screened to attendees prior to this session.

Tuesday 25th May 5pm-7pm (BST)

“Dispatch” – a new composition performed

The original score Dispatch by composer and sonic artist Raven Chacon will be presented by himself and Candice Hopkins (Senior curator, Toronto Biennale). Aspects of the score will be performed by fine artist/violinist Laura Ortman and experimental archivist and percussionist Marshall Trammell. This exclusive presentation draws from Dispatch, Chacon and Hopkins’ reflections on the fight for cultural preservation and defence of Indigenous sovereignty at the Standing Rock Reservation Water Protector encampment in 2016.

Open Forum Series - a number of post campus events will provide space to reflect on the issues of art and ecologuy explored during this event and elsewhere. This ongoing programme in the lead-up to COP26 will be driven by participation / conversations / reflections / listening / building connections / sharing ideas and more...

Friday 4th June - 6pm - 8pm

) listening room (

Connecting with out-side places we cannot access directly, a page with a player and IRC chat box proposes a simple conversation among listeners with live streams on the Locus Sonus open microphone network.

A collaboration between Ella Finer and Soundcamp extends a series of events by the Acoustic Commons network, interested in ways that real-time materials can work as tools for study and advocacy, relying on ways the live can resist the conversion of sounds and places into, on the one hand, environmental spectacles or, on the other hand, recorded specimens.

The Acoustic Commons network is developing affordable devices for artists / researchers / activists to exchange environmental sounds in real-time, from a variety of sites - urban, rural and in between. This ‘live archive’ gives ways to listen ‘flatly’ to all kind of objects and organisms, and to be in touch across sites of ecoacoustic and cultural interest. Anybody can join the network, letting sounds of a place be heard among others. The work of the transmission community can be imagined as a kind of acoustic commoning, with its own esoteric lexicon of eventless listening, dislocated timeframes, strange familiarity with dropouts and specific places you have ‘never been.’

The transmission ecologies of the AC provide the basis for research, composition, ecological and activist projects. We invite participation in as if radio, in development for COP26, Glasgow in November 2021.

For details, to listen and join the chat on the 4th of June: acousticommons.net/listen

contributors

(in order of appearance)

Ana Cecilia Dinerstein: Born in Buenos Aires and based in England, United Kingdom, where she works as a professor of Sociology. She is a political sociologist, a philosopher and a feminist and decolonial critical theorist. She has created, and is working on what she calls critical research on the global politics of hope.

Shrishtee Bajpai: Activist-researcher based in Pune, India and member of Kalpavriksh. Her research is focussed on documenting, analysing, and networking alternatives to development. She helps in coordinating the Vikalp Sangam (alternative confluence) process in India.

Vasna Ramasar: Academic and activist from South Africa living and working in Sweden. She has always been involved in environmental justice, politics of environ-ment and alternatives to development.

Ashish Kothari: Founder-member of Indian environmental group Kalpavriksh. He has (co)authored or (co)edited over 30 books, and helps coordinate the Vikalp Sangam and Radical Ecological Democracy processes.

Alejandra Jiménez Ramírez: Activist in grassroots and indigenous socio-environmental movements, feminist, and rhizomatic weaver. Born in Mexico City, but self-exiled in the mountains and indigenous worldviews. Currently collaborates in Crianza Mutua México network and in Unitierra Oaxaca.

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer of Tlingit descent originally from Whitehorse, Yukon. She is Senior Curator of the Toronto Biennial of Art and co-curator of the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada. She was a part of the curatorial team for documenta 14 and a co-curator of the major exhibitions Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, and the 2014 SITElines biennial, Unsettled Landscapes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her writing is published widely, she lectures internationally and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art and the 2016 the Prix pour un essai critique sur l’art contemporain by the Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. His work ranges from chamber music to experimental noise to large scale installations, produced solo and with the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity. At California Institute of the Arts Chacon developed a compositional language steeped in both the modernist avant-garde and indigenous cosmologies and subjectivities. He has written for ensembles, musicians and non-musicians, and for social and educational situations, and toured the world as a noise artist. As an educator, Chacon has served as composer-in-residence for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project.

Marshall Trammell is an experimental archivist, percussionist, conductor, and composer. His practice is centred in social change interventions to generate new local and global ecologies that embrace improvisation as a collective in the creation of post-capitalist imaginaries. Trammell’s work also uses political aesthetic theory, data creation, mapping, and collective music-and-artmaking in order to step out of the domain of traditional cultural institutions. He received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant in 2015 to tour internationally with the band Black Spirituals and has been artist in residence at numerous venues. He was a board member of Merced County Arts Council (2014-2016), co-founder of Merced Youth Drum Corps, curator of Heavy Discipline series in Oakland (2012-13) & producer of Economimesis: Drummer's Secret Handshake, Economimesis: Black Fighting Formations and Decolonizing the Imagination: Arts Practicum.

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is a Brooklyn, NY composer, musician and artist. She produces solo albums, live performances and film/art soundtracks and frequently collaborates with artists in film, music, art, dance, multi-media, activitism and poetry. She plays violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, pedal steel guitar, sings through a megaphone, and makes field recordings. Ortman’s notable performances includes venues at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, MoMA P.S. 1, Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, SF MoMA, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, The Knitting Factory, CBGB’s, St. Marks Church, Dia Art Foundation, the Wave Farm, amongst countless other established and DIY venues in the US, Canada and Western Europe

T. J. Demos, an award-winning writer, is Professor of Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. He writes widely about contemporary art, global politics, and ecology. His research focuses on the intersections of contemporary art, radical politics, and ecology—particularly where art, activism, and visual culture oppose racial, colonial, and extractive capitalism, and where they work towards social, economic, and environmental justice. He is the author of numerous books, including: Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing (Duke University Press, 2020), Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and Political Ecology (Sternberg Press, 2016), and Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today, (Sternberg Press, 2017). Demos has also curated a number of exhibitions and film screening series, including Beyond the World's End at Santa Cruz' Museum of Art and History (2020-21); Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas, at Nottingham Contemporary (2015); Specters: A Ciné-Politics of Haunting, at Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum (2014); and Beyond the World’s End at the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz (2019).

Isa Fremeaux & Jay Jordan inhabit La Zone à Défendre (ZAD); a rebel territory that won a 40 year long struggle against the building of a new airport close to the French city Nantes. Isa was teaching at the Birkbeck University in London, quitting in 2011 to escape the neo-liberal academic world to look for other forms of teaching, storytelling & creative resistance. Labelled a "Domestic Extremist" by the UK police, and “a magician of rebellion” by the French press, Jay is an artist activist & co-founded the direct-action groups Reclaim the Streets & The Clown Army. A cameramen for Naomi Klein’s The Take & co-editor of the 2004 book We are everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism he now with isa co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Infamous for fermenting disobedience on bicycles, throwing snowballs at bankers, launching a rebel raft regatta to shut down a power station and refusing to be censored by the Tate Modern. Their latest pamphlet “We are Nature Defending itself; art, activism and autonomous zones” will be coming out with Pluto this autumn.

Kathy Hinde’s work grows from a partnership between nature and technology expressed through audio-visual installations and performances that combine sound, sculpture, image and light. Drawing on inspiration from behaviours and phenomena found in the natural world, she creates work that is generative; that evolves; that can be different each time it is experienced. Kathy aims to create work that gives rise to a poetic and reflective experience that enriches an appreciation of the everyday, inviting a heightened awareness of the world around us. Kathy frequently works in collaboration with other practitioners and scientists and often actively involves the audience in the creative process. She has created light and sound installations in public spaces, including urban streets, woodlands and forests. www.kathyhinde.co.uk

Amanda Bayley is Professor of Music at Bath Spa University. Following on from her PhD at the University of Reading on Bartok Performance Studies, her research interests lie in the areas of performance and analysis; processes of composition, rehearsal and performance in contemporary music; string quartets; and ethnomusicology. As an active viola player she is a member of the Taunton Sinfonietta, the Bristol Classical Players and various chamber groups. www.amandabayley.co.uk

Ian Thornhill lectures on a wide variety of topics, specialising in environmental sustainability, ecosystem and environmental management, citizen science and ecological principles. He is particularly responsible for the MSc Environmental Management course at Bath Spa University.
Ian’s main research interests tend to focus on urban and freshwater ecology, with a specific focus on pond ecosystems. Specifically, he researches ecosystem functioning, biodiversity conservation and landscape-scale processes.

Leandro Pisano is a curator, writer and independent researcher who is interested in intersections between art, sound and technoculture. The specific area of his research deals with political ecology of rural, marginal and remote territories. He is founder and director of Interferenze new arts festival (2003) and frequently he is involved in projects on electronic and sound art, conducts presentations, conferences and workshops in different universities or during events related with new media aesthetics, design, sound and territorial regeneration processes in several countries worldwide. He has written articles in several magazines and authored Nuove geografie del suono. Spazi e territori nell’epoca postdigitale (2017, Meltemi). Leandro holds a PhD in Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies from University of Naples and he is Honorary Scientific Fellow in Anglo-American Literature at University of Urbino. He is affiliate member of The Sound Art and Auditory Culture lab (SAAC) of the RMIT-Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s School of Art and is external member of the soundscape research group Paesaggi Sonori at DFA/University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland. He currently teaches Ancient Greek, Latin and Italian Literature in Italian secondary schools. www.leandropisano.it

Vincent Liegey is an engineer, interdisciplinary researcher, spokesperson for the French degrowth movement and co-author of Un Projet de Décroissanceons Utopia, 2013). He is also the coordinator of Cargonomia — a centre for research and experimentation on degrowth, a social cooperative for sustainable logistical solutions and local food distribution using cargo-bikes in Budapest. He co-authored Exploring Degrowth – A Critical Guide (Pluto Press) in 2020. Degrowth is an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction. The degrowth movement of activists and researchers advocates for societies that prioritize social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy. Degrowth means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has had multiple international solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 400 group exhibitions, including many international biennials. The creator of thirty-four films that have been screened in thousands of events of social movements, art institutions and film festivals, a retrospective of his films took place at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in 2013. In 2002, he won the first prize at the International Media Art Award of the ZKM in Karlsruhe and he is the first prize winner of the newly established Prix Thun for Art and Ethics Award in 2016. Since 2019 Ressler directs Barricading the Ice Sheets, a research project on the climate justice movement, funded by the Austrian Science Fund, that will lead to an exhibition at Camera Austria in Graz in September 2021. https://www.ressler.at

Lucia Pietroiusti studied critical theory at Birkbeck, University of London (MA) and gender studies at Trinity College, Dublin (M.Phil), with a specific focus on trauma and mourning in literature and the visual arts. Lucia is founder & curator of General Ecologies at London’s Serpentine Galleries. As Curator of Public Programmes, she is in charge of Park Nights, Saturdays Live, Talks and Seminar series and Serpentine Cinema, among others. She curated the critically acclaimed and Golden Lion Award winning Lithuanian pavilion at Venice Biennial 2018 Sun & Sea (Marina).

Dr Youba Sokona was elected Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October 2015. He is currently the Special Advisor for Sustainable Development at the South Centre. With over 35 years of experience addressing energy, environment and sustainable development in Africa, Youba Sokona is a well-known, leading global figure. In addition to these achievements, Youba Sokona has a proven track record of organisational leadership and management, for example as Coordinator of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) and as Executive Secretary of the Sahara and the Sahel Observatory (OSS). He is affiliated with numerous boards and organisations, including as a Member of the Board for the Institute of Development Studies, Honorary Professor at the University College London (UCL), and as a Special Advisor to the African Energy Leaders Group.

Rosalyn Bold is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability, she has a PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Manchester, an MA Latin American Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool, and a BA Social Anthropology, Cambridge University. Her work creates a cosmopolitics of climate change. She is currently editing a collected volume of indigenous perspectives of climate change from across the Americas, entitled Climate change: the end of the World? exploring contemporary mythologies of world ending, contrasting current temporalities and considering indigenous conceptions of causes of climate change as well strategies for mitigation.

Hicham Khalidi is currently the director of the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Prior to this, he was an associate curator of Lafayette Anticipations (Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette) in Paris. In this capacity, he was involved in commissioning work in the disciplines of fine art, design and fashion. In the period 2013–15, he was responsible for programming exhibitions and the Artefact Festival at the STUK House for Dance, Image and Sound in Leuven, Belgium. From 2003 to 2011 he was the artistic and general director of TAG, institute for contemporary art and music in The Hague, the Netherlands. Khalidi was the curator of the ACT II group exhibition in the Beirut Sharjah Biennial in 2017, served as a cultural attaché to the Biennale of Sydney in 2016, and was chief curator of the Marrakech Biennale in 2014.

Shaunak Mahbubani is a nomadic curator, currently living in India. They primarily pursue projects under the series 'Allies for the Uncertain Futures’ initiated in 2016. This exhibition series is focused on exploring the possibilities of socio-political, ecological and techno-evolutionary futures through the lens of non-duality. They are interested in complicating boundaries between artwork and the viewer through participatory gatherings, diffusions, and the use of non-white cube spaces. They have received exhibition grants from apexart (New York) and the Inlaks Foundation and were also a part of the inaugural 2017 edition of CISA (Curatorial Intensive South Asia) initiated by Khoj International Artist's Association and Goethe Institut Delhi. They have curated exhibitions at Embassy of Switzerland (New Delhi), Goethe Institut (New Delhi), Kalakar Theatre (New Delhi), Mumbai Art Room (Mumbai), 1Shanthi Road (Bangalore), and TIFA Working Studios (Pune). Mahbubani was Curator, Programming at The Gujral Foundation from Oct 2017 - Nov 2018, and is Prameya Art Foundation's Art Scribes Awardee 2018-2019.

Zasha Colah co-founded the research collaborative blackrice (Tuensang) and the curatorial collaborative and union of artists Clark House Initiative (Mumbai), an independent space dedicated to exploring new curatorial methods. She is currently a research fellow at the art space 221A (Vancouver) segueing between indigenous geographies in Myanmar, India and Canada called, The Scorched-Earthly. She teaches comparative curatorial theory at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan. She co-curated with Luca Cerizza, Campo Umano. Public Art 50 years After (Como, 2019); the third Pune Biennale, Habit-co-Habit. Artisitc Simulations of some Everyday Spaces (2017); and Prabhakar Pachpute (National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2016). She was part of the curatorial team of the second Yinchuan Biennale, Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge (2018). Her writing on the curatorial has been included in numerous international publications.

Sharmila Samant is Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Design and Performance at the Shiv Nadar University. She graduated in Sculpture from Sir J. J. School of Arts, which was followed by a diploma in Interior Design, a Fellowship at the Kanoria Center for Arts, Ahmedabad, and artist-residencies at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and at Gasworks in London. Samant was one of the founders of the Mumbai-based collective, Open Circle that sought to engage with contemporary socio-political issues via an integration of theory and practice. Negotiating in both private and public spheres, Samant has engaged in collaborative and participatory art projects with various communities while exploring ideas of exchange, accessibility and authorship. Her installations and video works have been part of many prominent exhibitions in biennales, museums, artist-led spaces and alternative venues in India and abroad. Samant has curated international events, screenings and exhibitions individually and in collaboration. www.sharmilasamant.in

Dr Ben Parry is an artist, curator and practice-led researcher based in London. He received his BA in Environmental Art from Glasgow School of Art, an MA in Urban Planning from the University of Liverpool and PhD from the University of the West of Scotland. Working internationally, his projects employ a wide range of mediums including film, photography, light, sound and machines. His research and practice explores the intersections of art intervention, urbanism and activism, and the self-organising systems of the user-generated city. He currently leads the MA Curatorial Practice at Bath School of Art.

Marianna Tsionki is a curator and educator originally from Athens is currently based in Manchester. She holds a BA in Multimedia Design from Huddersfield University, a MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths University of London and is completing a PhD in Curatorial Practice from the Manchester School of Art. Her research examines contemporary discourses at the intersection of art, architecture & technology focusing on spatial production, climate change, eco-aesthetics and migration. She has initiated a number of successful new commissions and exhibitions and as an independent curator she has organised exhibitions, performances, talks, conferences, film screenings and roundtable discussions.

Ursula Biemann (born 1955, Zurich, Switzerland) is an artist, author, and video essayist. Her artistic practice is strongly research oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water.

In her multi-layered videos, the artist interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, SF poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality. Her earlier writing and experimental video work focused on the gendered dimension of migration. She also made space and mobility her prime category in the curatorial projects “Geography and the Politics of Mobility”, “The Maghreb Connection“, and the widely exhibited art and research project Sahara Chronicle on clandestine migrationnetworks. With Black Sea Files (2005) Biemann shifted the primary focus to natural resources and their situated materiality. In 2010 she co-initiated the World of Matter collective project on global resource ecologies.

Recent field trips have taken her to the Amazonian rainforest and the Arctic region where she engages the larger temporalities of climate change with the project Forest Law, Deep Weather, Subatlantic and Acoustic Ocean, amplifying current discussions around ecology, multispecies communication and videographic world making.The main protagonist in these recent narratives is the figure of the indigenous scientist who emerges from a shared history of colonialism and modern science.

online programme

Click here to book your place

Monday 10th 2pm-4

Monday 10th May - 2pm - 4pm (BST)

Weaving transformative alternatives

h

Wednesday 12th May 5pm-7pm (BST) Climate Games Creative forms of resistance part I.

Saturday 15th May 2pm (BST)

Interpsecies Listening

Saturday 15th May 3pm-5pm (BST)

The Manifesto of Rural Futurism

Monday 17th May 10am-12pm (BST)

Degrowth - a good life for all. Creative forms of resistance part II.

5pm-7pm (BS

Monday 17th May 5pm-7pm (BST)

Everything’s coming together while everything’s falling apart.

Creative forms of resistance part III.

Tuesday 18th May 4pm-6pm (BST)

Environmental justice & climate balance.

Wednesday 19th May 10am-12pm (BST)

Indigenous perspectives of the end of the world

Thursday 20th May 2pm-4pm (BST)

Submerged knowledges

Monday 24th 4pm-6pm (BS

Monday 24th May 4pm-6pm (BST)

Meteorologicial mobilities

Meteorologicial mobilities

Tuesday 25th May 5pm-7pm (BST)

“Dispatch” – a new composition performed

Friday 4th June - 6pm - 8pm

) listening room (

book your place here

<Monday 10th MAY. 2-4pm (BST)>

Weaving transformative alternatives

<Wednesday 12th. 5pm-7pm (BST)>

Creative Forms of Resistance Part 1. Climate Games

<Saturday 15th. 2pm (BST)>

Interspecies listening

<Saturday 15th. 3pm-5pm (BST)>

The Manifesto of Rural Futurism

<Monday 17th. 10am-12pm (BST)>

Degrowth

Creative Forms of Resistance Part 2.

<Monday 17th. 5pm-7pm (BST)>

Everything’s coming together whille everything’s falling apart

Creative Forms of Resistance Part 3.

<Tuesday 18th. 4pm-6pm (BST)>

Environmental justice & climate balance

<Wednesday 19th. 10am-12pm (BST)

Indigenous Perspectives of the End of the World

<Thursday 20th. 2pm-4pm (BST)>

Submerged knowledges - Aab Biennium

<Monday 24th. 4pm (BST)>

Meteorolocial mobilities

<Friday 28th. 4pm-6pm (BST)>

Listening Room

contributors

Wednesday 12th May 5pm-7pm (BST)
Climate Games Creative forms of resistance part I.

Degrowth - a good life for all.
Creative forms of resistance part II.

Everything’s coming together
while everything’s falling apart.