Climate Change

18.06.2013

International Conference

19 – 21 June 2013, “Transformation in a Changing Climate”, Oslo, Norway

transformationThe aim of this conference is to bring together diverse perspectives on transformation, and to generate cutting-edge discussions on deliberate, ethical and sustainable transformation in response to the complex global challenges associated with climate change. The conference will hold a wide range of activities and events. Including a combination of both conventional and unconventional conference features, where each part of the program is carefully tailored to conference objectives, particularly the need for transdisciplinary dialogue.

“The idea of transformation is utopian, allowing us to envisage radical changes for a more sustainable and peaceful world. Utopian visions are important – if we can’t at least imagine a better world then we certainly can’t make it happen. The challenge for researchers is to build theories about transformation based on knowledge and evidence of how dramatic change has happened in the past” explains Jon Barnett, professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Department of Resource Management and Geography at Melbourne University.

For more information : http://www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/research/news-and-events/events/conferences-and-seminars/transformations/index.html

By Marion Wolfer

01.06.2013

Green Screens 2013 at Film Society of Lincoln Center

 May 31-June 4, 2013, Amphitheater at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, in New York

artportprojectGreen Screens focuses on the planet for an entire week of films that examine eco-crises and also highlight what people all around the world are doing to face these challenges.

COOL STORIES FOR WHEN THE PLANET GETS HOT is a part of the Films Society’s Green Screens 2013 program. COOL STORIES is a biennial short video competition, launched in 2007 by ARTPORT_making waves for artists all over the globe who respond to causes and effects of climate change. The shorts are selected by an international jury and the compilations of the finalists’ works have been shown at climate change conferences, cultural festivals, art fairs, and as part of curatorial and educational programs worldwide. The works are 1-3 minutes long and vary in tone and techniques, including 3-D animation, photo stories, animated drawing and clay, cartoons, and computer montages from footage found on YouTube.

ARTPORT_making waves is an international curators collective dedicated to stimulating the artistic response to climate change and exploring opportunities for positive change in environmental issues. The aim is to create, through exhibitions, panel discussions, and artists exchanges, sustainable networks of artists, curators, galleries, art collectors, and critics across borders to promote a true globalization of the artistic discourse, giving a voice to artists from all over the world. At the same time, ARTPORT_making waves encourages the cross-fertilization of art, science, and politics.

For more information : http://www.artport-project.org/

 

By Marion Wolfer

08.05.2013

Maya Lin: Here and There

Apr 26, 2013 – Jun 22, 2013, at Pace Gallery, in New York (USA)

New work by Maya Lin exploring her longtime interest in environmental issues, including rising currents and climate change, and expanding her engagement with natural and geographic forms. Click here for the gallery’s website

An article on the exhibition was published in the New York Times (on April 25th):
“…in a sense, Hurricane Sandy also woke up Ms. Lin. Soon after the floodwaters receded, she decided she wanted her latest show at Pace — her first conceived specifically for a commercial gallery — to fix on Manhattan and its surrounding landscape, environmental history and waterways.

“I really wanted people to understand more about literally what’s right under their feet,” she said. “I wanted to really focus on revealing aspects of New York, which we might not be thinking about from a natural, topographic, environmental point of view.”
 
Read the full article here, by Carol Kino.

Her website, mentioned below, is well worth visiting:

“…the show’s most unexpected aspect is a space devoted to her Web site What Is Missing? (whatismissing.net), begun in 2011 as part of a larger memorial to vanishing species and habitats worldwide. “I see it as a guerilla artwork,” she said.”

By Sacha Kagan

06.05.2013

Disappearance as work in progress: Approaches to ecological romanticism

maldives-khoj-2013
Part of the Maldives pavilion in Venice Bienniale 2013

Wednesday, 8 May 2013, 6 pm – 9 pm, Khoj Studios terrace, S – 17, Khirki Extension, New Delhi (India)

Khoj International Artists’ Association and Ravi Agarwal present an evening discussion addressing critical artistic practices that can help recover multiple ecologies and rethink ideas of progress.

Participants: Navjot Altaf, Amar Kanwar, Ravi Agarwal, Prof. Vikram Soni, Ravi Sundaram (moderator) and Camilla Boemio (from Rome via Skype)

For more information: www.khojworkshop.org

By Sacha Kagan

14.04.2013

Green Mobility Guide for the Performing Arts

Research dossier available in 5 languages

Commissioned by On The Move to creative industries environmental experts Julie’s Bicycle, the Green Mobility Guide offers practical recommendations for professionals across the performing arts, case studies and resources, including the Julie’s Bicycle “IG tool” for tracking carbon emissions while on tour.

Available since 2011 in English language, and now also in: Chinese, French, German, Italian.

To find out more and download the guide in all 5 languages, click here.

By Sacha Kagan

22.02.2013

Project seeks to map and reduce ocean noise pollution

In an effort to reduce the undocumented and unlimited rising of oceanic noise pollution, the US government is completing the first phase of a project by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which seeks to document human-made noises in the ocean and transform the results into the world’s first oceanic sound maps.

The first results of the project are publicly available and have shown that the noise levels in the ocean are too high, especially in areas where sea mamals and whales spend most of their time.

The hope is high, that by providing detailed information on the current state of the ecosystem, political actions will follow. As most commercial vessels are registered abroad and the better part of noise pollution is happening in international water, the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations body responsible for improving marine safety and reducing ship pollution, which also has the authority to set acoustic standards, is sought to be the lead change agent in this development.
But even with the preliminary results available, non-binding guidelines are the furthest political measure being discussed on the international level.

In any case, adjusting the shipbuilding to include noise reducing measures, the most feasible method to actively reduce the noise emission of a ship, will have a delayed effect, with ships having lifetime’s of 30 to 50 years.

For the entire article on nytimes.com, click here.

By Nikolai Huckle

18.02.2013

Call for Papers – Climate Change, Sustainability and an Ethics of an Open Future

Societas Ethica, the European Society for Research in Ethics, in cooperation with the ESF (European Science Foundation) network A Right to a Green Future is calling for papers for their Annual Conference, this year held in Soesterberg, Netherlands on August 22-25, 2013. It will be the 50th Societas Ethica conference. Read more »

By Nikolai Huckle

12.12.2012

Nigerian theatre mixes oil and climate, on the ground

Wallace Heim writes:

“The Nigerian playwright and academic Greg Mbajiorgu got in touch with us after reading Robert Butler’s blogs on Ashdenizen on the difficulties of writing plays about climate change. Greg sent us his play, Wake Up Everyone, which has a preface quoting from this blog.

Wake Up Everyone began as a commission by the African Technology Policy Studies Network, Nairobi, Kenya for their international conference on climate change in Nigeria in 2009. Read more »

By Nikolai Huckle

04.12.2012

A Climate Change in the Art World?

An interesting article on www.artnews.com, written by Robin Cembalast, gives insight about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the art community in New York and shows that Sandy could have been the wake-up call for the community to realize that action against climate change is required on their part.

Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s Chief Curator of Architecture and Design is thinking about reshaping New York in a collective movement of architects, designer, officials and others:

“I don’t want to have yet another panel discussion, I want something that takes it to yet another level of effectiveness. I’m trying to figure out what that is.”

A more radical art project concerned with Global Warming is the Greenhouse Britain by the Harrisons, as it addresses resettlement as the final consequence of climate change and shows how artists can work with architects and urban planners to redesign cities and neighborhoods. Of course this proposes a more drastic approach to the reaction to climate change and arts’s role in it, as it asumes that rising water levels are inevitable and that the then displaced population will need a differently designed civilization. But maybe adaption to climate change will require this kind of transformation?

For the whole article at artnews.com, click here.

By Nikolai Huckle

26.11.2012

Art installation (removal) leads to controversy at Wyoming University

British environmental artist Chris Drury´s art installation Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around created back in July 2011 on the Wyoming university campus, was originally intended to inspire a conversation about a prevalent environmental problem in the region. Global warming has, so scientists say, led to less pine beetles dying off by below zero temperature and thus more forest infested by the tree-killing beetles.

The sculpture features a 36-foot-wide circle of logs from beetle-killed trees, arranged in a circular pattern around a pile of coal and thus it points at the link between human induced climate change and dead forests. A big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions however is the burning of coal.

Plausible topic for an art installation, but in a state where the fossil fuel industry is a major economic driver as well as a known financial supporter of the University of Wyoming, some toes were bound to be stepped on. Read more »

By Nikolai Huckle

24.11.2012

Get Fracktious – National Climate March in London

The Campaign against Climate Change, a UK-based group concerned with raising public awareness to human-caused climate change, is organizing a demonstration march through London on Saturday 1st December 2012. The main topic is the expansion of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, a destructive extraction practice of previously un-tappable “shale-gas”, in the UK, which is seen as a step backwards regarding actions against climate change.

In line with their message, they will try to build a mock fracking rig outside the parliament and a gas pipeline from the Canadian High Commission to the US embassy.

For more information and the whole timetable: http://www.campaigncc.org/getfracktious

By Nikolai Huckle

21.11.2012

Call for Papers: Media and Climate Change

Papers are welcomed for a special issue of the journal Environmental Communication: A Journal of Culture and Nature (Official Journal of IECA) to be published in March 2014 on the topic of Media Research on Climate Change.

Acknowledging the vast amount of academic research done over the past decade on the media coverage of climate change and its various results, questions of how to continue in this research field have risen. What conclusions can be drawn from the existing works and how can the research move into the next phase? In which direction should the field orient itself, theoretically and empirically speaking?

Possible themes papers may address include:

  • The development of theoretical and conceptual frameworks for media studies on climate change
  • (New) methodological procedures for media studies on climate change
  • Particularly important empirical aspects of future media studies on climate change, such as online representations and/or the role of communications campaigns/persuasive communication
  • Ways in which media studies on climate change can be integrated into interdisciplinary collaborative research aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change impacts

Deadline for submissions: 28 February 2013

For more detailed information on the journal and how to submit the paper, click here.

By Nikolai Huckle

16.11.2012

Drawing the line

As reported in The New Yorker,  eco-artist Eve Mosher was more or less forcefully reminded of one of her older projects by the more recent catastrophic event, Hurricane Sandy. Back in 2007 over the course of six months, she drew a line of chalk through Brooklyn representing 10 feet above see level.

Comparing the results back then to the path of destruction left by Hurricane Sandy today, confirms her implied assumptions of rising sea levels and increasing frequency of storms, caused by climate change, again raising the question why climate change hasn’t become a major political issue in the USA earlier.

For the whole article at newyorker.com, click here.

By Nikolai Huckle

14.11.2012

The Psychology of Climate

A broader view on the connection between the climate – the very air we breathe – and psychology

On the 28th September 2012, a seminar on The Psychology of Climate took place in Oslo, organized by BI Norwegian Business School. Some presentations were recorded and are now available on Youtube.

Read more »

By Nikolai Huckle

10.11.2012

No Longer the Miner´s Canary

We need to learn to adapt to the environmental crises we have created.

Zoltán Grossman’s article No Longer the Miner’s Canary: Indigenous Nations’ Response to Climate Change published on Terrain.org argues that there are significant lessons to learn from indigenous peoples. These lessons focus on community building and sharing knowledge amongst communities, thus empowering people. Experts are responsible to inform and engage with communities. The article focuses on the value of work at the scale between the disempowered individual and the ineffective federal government – that is the scale of towns and cities, bioregions and tribal landscapes.

Reposted from ecoartscotland.org

By Nikolai Huckle