Asking the reader to uncover and unfold each spread to reveal its content, this zine reminds us through these tearing and unravelling actions to care for how we engage with its pages and content. Functioning as a conceptual map that borrows graphic languages from natural textures and topographies, it becomes a landscape of practices that can help us navigate the sometimes frightening reality of our climate presents and futures.
Reflecting on this process, researcher Orestis Kollyris, in conversation with graphic designer Akash Sheshadri, discuss the way the design intersects with the works and their personal perspective on the importance of artistic research.
Finally, a sticker set invites us to spread visual climate imaginaries into other pages and surfaces. Rather than a compilation of finished works, this publication is a moment of reflection on the ongoing practices of its contributors. It is a window into the questions at the heart of the Climate Imaginaries at Sea programme and an invitation to engage with the urgency of the topics it addresses and strive to keep making waves.
The zine “Making Waves #2” was launched on the 23rd of April 2024 at VOX-POP, during the Climate Imaginaries at Sea Festival.
Email info@arias.amsterdam for a free copy.
About Climate Imaginaries at Sea
Climate Imaginaries at Sea speculates possible futures in and around water through various artistic and participatory research practices. Three collaborating research groups bring the project forward: Art & Spatial Praxis at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (GRA), the Lectorate of the Academy of Theatre and Dance at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) and the Visual Methodologies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). The research groups work in partnership with ARIAS, a platform for artistic research in Amsterdam, and a network of partners that includes Tolhuistuin, the Institute for Sound & Vision and CoECI – Centre of Expertise for Creative Innovation.
How can we liberate the imagination from recurring stereotypes that understand climate change as something from the future, far away, affecting others, while so many people around the world already live with its devastating impact? How can material research, interspecies perspectives and indigenous water and climate knowledges help us form new ways of relating to the climate emergency?
These are some of the questions that initiated this second volume of “Making Waves,” in which artists and researchers create micro-worlds that invite us into their research and processes. Exploring the role of imagination as a facilitator between generations and across species, geographies and material worlds, Amanda Piña, Carlo De Gaetano, Janine Armin, and Müge Yilmaz’s contributions open channels for understanding different facets of life with rising seas.
On January 24th, the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision in Hilversum hosted a Dutch New European Bauhaus (NEB) event, focusing on building local ecosystems that envision and implement more sustainable and equitable ways of living.
During this event, participants explored the significance of imagination, storytelling, and heritage as foundational elements for fostering communities of care amidst the climate crisis.
The program featured projects from the Climate Imaginaries at Sea program, ekip, and CrAFt – Crafting Actionable Futures.
During the event, we hosted the fourth iteration of It happened tomorrow (Reflections on Water), a workshop that invites participants to imagine a future Netherlands impacted by rising sea levels and climate change, starting from a special audiovisual collection from Sound & Vision to draw speculative landscapes related to specific environmental and societal scenarios.
The imagined landscapes were then narrated (with the help of AI) from the point of view of Valeria, a south European traveler doing a Grand Tour of the Netherlands in 2174, writing letters to her brother Luca about the wonders and struggles of the Dutch adapting to sea level rise and climate change. These fictional sketches and field notes will be used in future NEB events to prompt experts in different fields to discuss viable adaptation strategies for future ways of living.
This workshop is part of the larger program titled Climate Imaginaries at Sea, where the Visual Methodologies Collective (AUAS) and its partners explore how artistic research can open up people’s current visions, fears, and hopes for a future with a changing climate.
What makes you feel that you belong in the city?
When addressing diversity in urban planning and urban policy there is a tendency to look at social issues in isolated ways. But identities are complex, intricate and interwoven. If someone is for instance both gay and disabled, their urban experience might be a lot different from people who are queer and able-bodied, or heterosexual and disabled. To understand these intersections this research folds into it Data Feminism; practices of intersectional feminist theory and critique.
First, participatory methods rethink citizen engagement as a process, redefining who is invited to the conversation and suggesting alternative and more sensitive ways of engaging under represented communities. Second, the way that data is used to tell stories about people’s urban experiences is redesigned. It is also crucial that the binary pink-and-blue gender diagrams are replaced, and a more nuanced data visualisation language is introduced that captures the intersectional complexity of social issues.
To do so, this research experiments with making maps and visualisations that break hierarchies, challenge binaries and exposes power dynamics that shape feelings of belonging in cities.
This research is apart of the Urban Belonging project initiated in 2021 by a collective of planners and scholars in Copenhagen with the ambition of mapping lived experiences of under-represented communities in the city. Collaboration partners include Techno-Anthropology Lab, Service Design Lab at Aalborg University, Center for Digital Welfare at IT University of Copenhagen, and Gehl Architects.
A look at the rich history of local media-making in and around the Bijlmer neighbourhood in Amsterdam-Zuidoost.
Amsterdam-Zuidoost has a long tradition of media-making as a way to be heard, represent themselves, have influence, and create a feeling of home. From the pirate radio stations of the 1970’s all the way to the podcasts and digital radio stations of today, the practice of making and listening to radio strengthens a community identity and contributes to a sense of belonging. Thinking through the broader issue of auditory culture in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, participatory exercises and workshops within the community take a closer look at the listening needs of the local community.
What is being listened to, and why? And does radio still have a place in the listening behaviour of the young people?
Explore the outcomes of these exercises and workshops at the Research Station itself this spring, where its various drawers contain research materials for each line of inquiry.
Other partners:
ImagineIC