UK Workshop on Art and Climate Change Activism
The very forward-thinking organizers of the UK Camp for Climate Action are hosting a weekend-long planning event for artists interested in the issues surrounding climate change. This strategic inclusion of art and design in activism is a first that deserves much applause.
On the matter of whether art can catalyze change, the organizers supplant the question of efficacy with one of efficiency. They want activist artists who aren’t interested in just representing issues of climate change, or impotently propagandizing, but who wish to directly confront and transform the issue itself.
The workshop will take place over three days, from Friday 13th July to late Sunday afternoon, 15th July, and while the exact location has yet to be announced. However, the proposal to host it in a village threatened by the expansion of Heathrow airport is in keeping with the Camp’s focus: challenging the root causes of climate change, especially the aviation industry and airport expansion.
Titled “Departure Lounge” and facilitated by artist/activists John Jordan and Katharine Ainger, a key inspiration for the workshop will be Steven Duncombe’s concept of creating Ethical Spectacles.
More, they are drawing on a long lineage of some of the most successful political movements:
the suffragettes chaining themselves to buildings, the beautiful tree houses of the anti roads protesters, the Zapatistas with their poetic communiques and masks, Reclaim the Streets’ rebel carnivals, the Italian white overalls’ imaginative take on civil disobedience. All these forms have emerged when the unbridled imagination of art mixes with the deep social engagement of politics. The growing radical movement for climate justice needs its own new forms.
To enlist, please write the organizers before the 29th June.
Related posts:
- Play it Cool? In Search of an Ethics and Aesthetics for dealing with Climate Change
- Opposable Thumb @ Sea Change Gallery
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