Some pics from us, to you, to enjoy throughout the summer months!
Articles
Creatively connecting science, society and the sea: a mini-review of academic literature focusing on art-science collaborations and the ocean
Abstract
This mini-review charts the current academic research on art-science collaborations and the ocean, focusing on literature where artists and scientists work together to produce something based on scientific research. The study finds that these relationships are never apolitical, are complex and develop differently depending on each project. In sum the paper will highlight that although the academic literature is limited, its diversity has the potential to reach numerous academic disciplines and that focusing on process and engagement should be a direction for further research to help broaden the academic reach of these important oceanic knowledges.
Read more:
Reference
Whittaker GR, 2023, "Creatively connecting science, society and the sea: a mini-review of academic literature focusing on art-science collaborations and the ocean". Front. Mar. Sci. 10:1234776. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2023.1234776
The art of science
Abstract
Science is key to addressing global health challenges, but it needs to work with the arts to reach all who could benefit, says Danielle Olsen
Read more:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0262407923000209
Reference
Olsen, Danielle, 2023, "The art of science", New Scientist, Vol. 257, Iss. 3420, pg. 21. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(23)00020-9.
Books
Material Witness
Summary
In this book, Susan Schuppli introduces a new operative concept: material witness, an exploration of the evidential role of matter as both registering external events and exposing the practices and procedures that enable matter to bear witness. Organized in the format of a trial, Material Witness moves through a series of cases that provide insight into the ways in which materials become contested agents of dispute around which stake holders gather. These cases include an extraordinary videotape documenting the massacre at Izbica, Kosovo, used as war crimes evidence against Slobodan Milošević; the telephonic transmission of an iconic photograph of a South Vietnamese girl fleeing an accidental napalm attack; radioactive contamination discovered in Canada's coastal waters five years after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi; and the ecological media or “disaster film” produced by the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Each highlights the degree to which a rearrangement of matter exposes the contingency of witnessing, raising questions about what can be known in relationship to that which is seen or sensed, about who or what is able to bestow meaning onto things, and about whose stories will be heeded or dismissed.
Link:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043571/material-witness/
Reference
Schuppli, Susan, 2020, Material Witness, MIT Press
The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
Summary
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning.
Link:
Reference
Ghosh, Amitav, 2022, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, University of Chicago Press
Green Revisited. Encountering Emerging Naturecultures in Art and Research
Summary
The Green Revisited book introduces new discourses on “naturecultures”, which recently have been re-examined at the heart of our society. The book is an outcome of the European cooperation project Green Revisited – Encountering Emerging Naturecultures, which was launched in 2019 with two large-scale exhibitions: ”UN/GREEN” in Riga, Latvia, and “OU\ /ERT: Phytophilia–Chlorophopia–Situated Knowledges” in Bourges, France, aimed at complicating the pervasively employed notion of “green” and exploring one of the most paradoxical topics of our times. A series of conferences, workshops and symposiums organized by project partners in Oslo, Eindhoven, Ljubljana, Helsinki and Liepaja addressed the complexity of the contemporary “greenness” trope beyond its predominant symbolic notions. An ongoing war in the heart of Europe reveals fatal political dependencies on fossil fuels, meanwhile populations are becoming physically aware of climate change during a summer of unprecedented heat waves. The contributors to Green Revisited therefore challenge our anthropocentric narratives by reconsidering the relations between humankind and non-human agencies, nature and techno-science, and propose tentative steps towards a more sustainable coexistence with our environment.
Link:
Reference
Smite Rasa, Hauser Jens, Bergaust Kristin & Raitis Smits (eds.), 2022, Green Revisited. Encountering Emerging Naturecultures in Art and Research, RIXC, LiepU MpLab, OsloMET
DIA–LOGOS. Ramon Llull’s Method of Thought and Artistic Practice
Summary
The life and work of the outstanding Catalan-Majorcan philosopher, logician, and mystic Ramon Llull continues to fascinate thinkers, artists, and scholars worldwide. The primary idea of Ramon Llull’s teachings – to enable rational and therefore trustworthy dialogue between cultures and religions through a universally valid system of symbols – is today still topical and of great relevance, especially in the tensions prevailing in globalized spaces of possibility. In this book, international experts address Lullism as a remarkable and distinctive method of thinking and experimenting.
Link:
https://zkm.de/en/publication/dia-logos
Reference
Vega Amador, Weibel Peter & Siegfried Zielinski (eds.), 2019, DIA–LOGOS. Ramon Llull’s Method of Thought and Artistic Practice, The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces
Summary
Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces considers the challenges that accompany an assessment of the role of contemporary art in heritage contexts, whilst also examining ways to measure and articulate the impact and value of these intersections in the future. Presenting a variety of perspectives from a broad range of creative and cultural industries, this book examines case studies from the past decade where contemporary art has been sited within heritage spaces. Exploring the impact of these instances of intersection, and the thinking behind such moments of confluence, it provides an insight into a breadth of experiences – from curator, producer, and practitioner to visitor – of exhibitions where this juncture between contemporary art and heritage plays a crucial and critical role. Themes covered in the book include interpretation, soliciting and measuring audience responses, tourism and the visitor economy, regeneration agendas, heritage research, marginalised histories, and the legacy of exhibitions. Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces will be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museum and heritage studies and contemporary art around the globe. Museum practitioners and artists should also find much to interest them within the pages of this volume.
Link:
Reference
Cass Nick, Park Gill Park, & Anna Powell (eds.), 2020, Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces, Routledge, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY
Ways of Being
Summary
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings— beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.
Link:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/317823/ways-of-being-by-bridle-james/9780241469651%C2%A0
Reference
Bridle, James, 2022, Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence, Penguin Random House, London.
Performing Mourning. Laments in Contemporary Art
Summary
In a poetic, meandering, personal way Cools explores cultural habits, traditions, rituals, and artists’ performances. His narrative looks into many forms of laments: literary, anthropological, philosophical, and in contemporary art practices. The latter part delves into artistic strategies to address or embody mourning: dialogical strategies that deal with personal losses; collective mourning rituals and how they invite communities to witness these losses; contemporary examples of laments that are not only used to dialogue with the dead but also to communicate with loved ones who are absent because of migration or exile; a very specific form of mourning that occurs when we grieve for the unrealized potential of a child’s unlived life, including that of an unborn child. And finally, the very recent phenomenon of lamenting not just the losses of the past, but also the loss of a future.
Link:
https://valiz.nl/en/publications/performing-mourning
Reference
Cools, Guy, 2021, Performing Mourning. Laments in Contemporary Art, Valiz, Amsterdam.
Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time: Michel Serres with Bruno Latour (Studies In Literature And Science)
Summary
Although elected to the prestigious French Academy in 1990, Michel Serres has long been considered a maverick--a provocative thinker whose prolific writings on culture, science and philosophy have often baffled more than they have enlightened. In these five lively interviews with sociologist Bruno Latour, this increasingly important cultural figure sheds light on the ideas that inspire his highly original, challenging, and transdisciplinary essays. In the course of these conversations Serres revisits and illuminates many of his themes: the chaotic nature of knowledge, the need for connections between science and the humanities, the futility of traditional criticism, and what he calls his "philosophy of prepositions"--an argument for considering prepositions, rather than the conventionally emphasized verbs and substantives, as the linguistic keys to understanding human interactions. For readers familiar with Serres's works as well as for the uninitiated, Conversations on a Life in Philosophy provides fascinating insights into the mind of this appealing, innovative and ardent thinker.
Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Science-Culture-Time-Literature/dp/0472065483
Reference
Serres, Michel (Roxanne Lapidus transl.), 1995, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time: Michel Serres with Bruno Latour (Studies In Literature And Science), University of Michigan Press, Michigan
Potato Tata
Summary
This book aims at sharing the basic concepts of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with the youth and stimulating reflection on the environmental impact of products. The environmental impacts of Potato Tata presented are based on a study on the environmental impacts of European citizens' consumption, carried out by the European Commission's Research Center. The environmental impacts are assessed with life cycle assessment.
Link:
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130685
Reference
Caldeira, C., Gusmini, G., França, C. and Gusmini, M., Potato Tata, Sala, S. editor(s), Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2022, ISBN 978-92-76-59134-4, doi:10.2760/962591, JRC130685.
Alcibiades
Review
Famous Dutch author Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer – a classicist by training – gives the Athenian flamboyant, brilliant, sensational, androgynous, bisexual and contentious politician, strategist, general, demagogue, and traitor a voice in an impressive novel on the Athenian democracy in the fifth century before Christ. Written in an effusive and baroque style, Pfeijffer presents the controversial life of the Athenian with unflinching honesty, not shirking the many debatable decisions of an egocentric and perturbed career. He also dwells on the crisis of the Athenian democracy, and by revelling in the many parallels between our society and the Athenian one of 2500 years ago (freely using terms like populist, fake news, cancelling, capital injection and some other untranslatable Dutch slang), Pfeiffer succeeds in bringing Alkibiades and his time very close to our contemporary societies. A must-read for anyone who knows the Dutch language – the other will have to wait for the translations, which will undoubtedly come soon, or take in hand Pfeijffer’s previous international bestseller, Grand Hotel Europa
Link:
https://iljapfeijffer.com/en/work/prose/alcibiades/
Reference
Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard, 2023, Alcibiades, De Arbeiderspers Acantilado (SP)
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Review
A treasure chest of a book, which reads like a novel and is crammed with the latest research in both anthropology and archaeology. The scope is to find an answer to the question where inequality comes from. In the course of investigating possible answers, Graeber and Wengrow deconstruct the current thinking on humankind’s evolution (as exemplified in the works of authors like Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker and Yuval Harari) bringing about a paradigm shift in the study of human history. Not a linear evolution from foraging of hunter-gatherers to the agriculture of farmers to commercial civilisations, with inevitable loss of equality, but rather a plethora of different solutions that, in the case of Western civilisation, got stuck in one model. So the question would not be why did we lose equality, but how did we come to be stuck with only one model of society. In the course of this exhilarating itinerary, Graeber and Wengrow re-evaluate indigenous thinking pointing out that the current discussions are heavily influenced by the ideological rebuttal of Illuminism of the critique of the first indigenous people on the 18-century French and English societies (with Hobbes and Rousseau as main culprits). They discuss a dialogue between French explorer Baron Lahontan and Wendat chief Kondariak’s indigenous critique of 18-century French and English societies, published in 1702, with a sustained and pointed criticism from the Wendat chief. From a Naturarchical point of view, their appreciation of indigenous thought as dialogical and well informed, and of the political savvy of indigenous tribes in past and contemporary societies is a good reminder not to fall into the trap of the noble sauvage. So definitely worth reading, if only to update your knowledge on recent developments in both fields.
Link:
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130685
Reference
Graeber, David and David Wengrow, 2021,The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Allen Lane, London
News
European Heritage Hub inaugurated in Brussels to support Europe’s green, social and digital transformation through cultural heritage.
Teaser
The European Heritage Hub was inaugurated last week in Brussels. The partners of the hub gathered in the heart of EU policy and decision-making on 10-11 May for an eventful two-day programme marking the start of one of the largest cultural heritage-driven projects across Europe to support the green, social and digital transformation of our society. The project is funded by the European Union and will run for an initial two-year period, from May 2023 to April 2025.
Read more:
Reference:
European Heritage Hub, May 16 2023 (online), link: https://www.europanostra.org/european-heritage-hub-inaugurated-in-brussels-to-support-europe-green-social-and-digital-transformation/
Reports
Food futures — Sustainable food systems
JRC Report by artists Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter.
The Farm to Fork strategy is a cornerstone of the European Green Deal. It strives for a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system fulfilling the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The strategy presents the policy perspective: the case for action; the need to build a new food chain; the imperative for a just and fair transition benefitting all actors within the EU and beyond. Essentially, it puts forward the grand plan for sustainable food systems. But what about the people perspective? How do our values, our culture and our individual views of the world influence how far policy can drive change in the way we think about food, and how willing we are to really embrace sustainable food systems? Such pivotal questions are not only scientific in nature, so we looked to the JRC’s Art & Science programme and our artists in residence, Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter (honey & bunny) to help us explore what goes into the making of a sustainable sandwich, and how will it taste?! Although this beautifully illustrated book is the unique creation of Sonja and Martin, their research was enriched through lively engagement with scientists from across the JRC who work in numerous fields linked to the complex world of sustainable food systems. Our hope is that the book serves to create healthy conversation and debate, to make the implicit explicit, and to explore collectively the emotional challenges that lie on the horizon.
Read more:
Reference
Culture and Democracy: the evidence. How citizens’ participation in cultural activities enhances civic engagement, democracy and social cohesion.
An independent report commissioned by and authored for the European Commission.
This report analyses the concrete link between democracy and culture. It maps out how citizens who participate in cultural activities are much more likely to engage in civic and democratic life. Inequalities persist throughout the EU when it comes to citizens’ participation in cultural activities, with a clear knock-on impact on democratic participation. This report, and addressing the issues identified within it, is part of the work the European Commission is doing to strengthen democracy, to promote an inclusive and engaged society and to support the sustainability of the cultural sector. In the Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026, we put a specific focus on the link between culture and democracy, and we want to bring policy makers and stakeholders together to jointly work towards the concept of cultural citizenship in the EU.
Read more:
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/07370fba-110d-11ee-b12e-01aa75ed71a1/
Reference
European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Hammonds, W. (2023) Culture and Democracy, the evidence : how citizens’ participation in cultural activities enhances civic engagement, democracy and social cohesion : lessons from international research. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/39199
Towards a fair and sustainable Europe 2050. Social and economic choices in sustainability transitions
This foresight study explores possible and necessary changes in the European social and economic systems as the European Union engages in managing sustainability transitions towards 2050. With this focus, the study presents strategic areas of intervention covering a new social contract, governance for sustainability, people and economy, and the global perspective on sustainability. The study reflects on the agency of EU actors (such as government at various levels, business, and communities) to address the strategic areas of intervention as part of collectively addressing sustainability transitions. The study builds on a participatory foresight exercise, which generated four foresight scenarios for a climate-neutral EU in 2050. Based on each scenario, a corresponding transition pathway was co-created and analysed through the process. The study presents and analyses these outputs of the process. The outputs can also serve as input to policymakers and practitioners interested in conducting new participatory exercises on sustainability transitions.
Read more:
Reference
Matti, C., Jensen, K., Bontoux, L., Goran, P., Pistocchi, A. and Salvi, M., Towards a fair and sustainable Europe 2050: Social and economic choices in sustainability transitions, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2023, doi:10.2760/561899, JRC133716
Drivers of change of relevance for Europe's environment and sustainability: EEA Report
EEA Report | No 25/2019
This report, building on the experience of both the EEA and Eionet, presents a synthesis of global and European megatrends with illustrations of key emerging trends, wild cards and uncertainties. It aims to inform about on‑going, emerging and potential future developments, raise awareness and contribute to the diffusion of anticipatory thinking.
Read more:
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/drivers-of-change
Reference
Benini, Lorenzo and Vincent Viaud (lead authors) (2020) Drivers of change of relevance for Europe's environment and sustainability. EEA Report | No 25/2019. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2020 © European Environment Agency, 2020. doi:10.2800/129404
Webpages
Pro Helvetia Art, Science & Technology Directory
This directory presents 708 organisations from many world regions that work at the intersection of art, science and technology.
Link:
https://prohelvetia.ch/ast-directory/