16 Jun 2020
17:00 - 19:00
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 1: Climate Transformations
Framer Framed in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, will host a series of events focused on the global climate crisis. The first event in the Crisis Imaginaries series will be an online panel discussion with Carola Rackete, Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal, moderated by Jeff Diamanti.
“Climate change is a virus that paves the way for the dark side of humanity.” – preface from Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim in Tijd voor Actie (2020)
As the world shifts and shutters in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many have reasserted the importance of responding to climate change at a similar scale. We have watched the two crises intertwine, with early indicators showing a correlation between environmental degradation and an increased chance of animal to human virus contagion; likewise, more severe cases of Corona often appear and affect areas suffering from worse air pollution, with the same patterns of vulnerability exacerbated. What can we learn from our current crisis and take with us for our present and future crisis? Together, we will critically examine the notion of crisis as a spectacle that calls for strong leadership, threatening to devolve toward authoritarian tendencies, and as a narrative constructed from differential viewpoints.
“If the transformation of our society is to succeed, we must listen to each other.” Carola Rackete
Panel
Carola Rackete,
Radha D’Souza and
Jonas Staal.
Moderated by Jeff Diamanti.
This event is FREE and in ENGLISH.
The livestream will be uploaded to our Youtube channel. You can watch all editions of the series here. We will be gathering questions from the audience for the panelists via social media.
CAROLA RACKETE is captain and climate and human rights activist. She emphasizes the widespread effect of this slow violence and calls for action in the form of civil disobedience and global climate justice. For Rackete, the refugee and climate crises cannot be seen in isolation from each other: The global South is still weighed down by an urge for more prosperity and the consumption of the global North, which is destroying whole societies and ecosystems.
RADHA D’SOUZA is a writer, lawyer, academic and activist, and the author of ‘What’s Wrong with Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations‘ (2018), in which she challenges the reductive emphasis on the ‘human’ in the construct of international “human rights”. D’Souza approaches climate justice from an anti-colonial and Third World lens and thus demands an end to the epistemological violence that underpins European Enlightenment and brought us to the climate crisis of our times. D’Souza insists that our ties to nature are a ‘relationship’ and like all relationships it needs to be fostered, nourished and cherished.
JONAS STAAL in the work of this Dutch visual artist engaging art and culture in shaping alternative ecologies of comradeship also plays a large role. Commissioned by Framer Framed, Jonas Staal and Radha D’Souza will develop the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes, (2021-2022) an alternative climate tribunal to prosecute intergenerational climate crimes, making a case for ‘interdependent rights’ following the work of D’Souza. Staal’s practice also deals heavily with the relationship between art and propaganda, and some of his recent research has aimed at mapping various contemporary “climate propagandas”. His most recent publication is Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (2019).
Together with Rackete, Staal and D’Souza we ask and discuss in this online panel moderated by Jeff Diamanti: What transformations are necessary to at this turning point of history? How do we move toward action instead of hope?
JEFF DIAMANTI is Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. With Imre Szeman, he is the editor of Energy Cultures – Art and Theory on Oil and Beyond (West Virginia University Press), and with Amanda Boetzkes, he co-organizes At the Moraine, an ongoing research project on the political ecology of glacial retreat in Greenland. With Lynn Badia and Marija Cetinić is co-editor of the Climate Realism book and journal collection. His book Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum – Locating Terminal Landscapes is forthcoming with Bloomsbury.
Series Description
Crisis Imaginaries is a project by Framer Framed and Goethe-Institut Niederlande. The series explores the climate and ecological crises through participatory research and from intersectional & interdisciplinary perspectives. Reckoning with colonial-imperial roots, we seek to deepen our understanding of a present defined by extinction and environmental destruction and a future bracing for climate collapse. The project promotes spaces of listening and knowledge/resource sharing in an effort to move toward a more climate just society.
Carole Rackete, Tijd voor actie
Action Research / Crisis Imaginaries / Ecology / Art and Activism / Political Climate /
Agenda
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 7: Practices Against Extractivism
Together with Aline Baiana, Taipixi Guajajara, Ana Eugênia and Milena Bonilla
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 6: Ecologies of Vulnerability and Resistance
Discussion with Edna Bonhomme and J.T. Roane, moderated by Jeff Diamanti
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 5: On Slow Violence and the Anti-Spectacle
Film screening and discussion with Connie Zheng and Irene de Craen
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 4: Climate Interventions
Online panel on creating an altered world with Jessika Khazrik, Tega Brain and Claudius Schulze, moderated by Marija Cetinić
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 3: Climate Feelings
Online panel on the climate crisis with Ada M. Patterson, Aline Baiana, Clementine Edwards and Tal Beery, moderated by Binna Choi
Crisis Imaginaries, Chapter 2: Visibility Politics & Climate Justice
Online panel on intersectional climate justice with Chihiro Geuzebroek, Asuka Kähler and Raki Ap, moderated by Amanda Boetzkes
Network
Radha D'Souza
Writer, academic, lawyer and activist
Jeff Diamanti
Professor and editor
Carola Rackete
Activist and Captain
