Petro-subjectivity and social ecology, Evolutionary popolations: the seeds of the world waiting to germinate, Towards an expanded landscape: these are the names of the three modules held last week at Cittadellarte, as part of UNIDEE’s summer camp. This combination of educational proposals involved sixteen international artists, who worked with three visiting artists on the issue of the struggle against climate change. In line with the principles of Cittadellarte – engaged in practices aiming at placing art in a virtuous relationship with every sector of society – and inspired by the topics of goal no. 13 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda (‘Climate Action’), the participants worked in three distinct groups – each curated by a different mentor – on the theme of climate action.
It was an experience that placed art and environment on the same line of action, to produce and trigger a responsible social transformation also starting from green issues. As mentioned in one of our previous articles, the three artists curating the week’s activities have a history of undertaking projects and programmes of agroecology, communities of practice of emancipation from oil derivative products, imagining new horizons for our society. The three mentors Brett Bloom, Luigi Coppola and Fernando García-Dory in fact articulated and developed the key themes and concepts of the module on the basis of their artistic backgrounds.
“This year, – says to us Valerio Del Baglivo, UNIDEE’s visiting curator – we have proposed a new educational model for the UNIDEE programme: a summer camp with three art practitioners coming from three different contexts. We have called it Climate Action, with the intention of discussing what we can do to subvert the dominant narrative of the irreversibility of the climate crisis. I believe that this theme is one of those categories so complex to frighten any kind of propositional thought: what can I do as an individual to face a process which has reached its peak? I don’t think it is down to us to find adequate answers to a problem mainly (but not only!) scientific and political, but we can certainly debate about what micro-actions we can carry out in our daily lives. That’s why we have invited three artists who for a long time have been engaged in examining the controversies surrounding the climate crisis and in imagining a different future. With Brett Bloom, Luigi Coppola e Fernando Garcia Dory, we experimented with deep and land listening techniques, discussed agropolitical practices, reviewed our convictions about the landscape, to question the power exercised through the expropriation and the exploitation of land, communities and biodiversity”.
The three mentors talked to us to define and further highlight the activities and contents of the summer camp: here are their video interviews.
