Symposium
13. - 14. July 2012
Photo: eSel.at
with
Klaus Lackner, Ralo Mayer, Lukas Meyer, Joachim Radkau, Raimar Stange, Vera Tollmann, Performance of Eva Meyer-Keller & Sybille Müller, Moderation: Klaus Schafler
context
The symposium is part of the Forum for Advanced Energy, Climate, and Weather Issues, from July 12 to 15, 2012, when politicians, scientists, theoreticians, and artists will come together and discuss climate and energy questions from different points of views.
Detailed Programme (pdf, 300 KB)
The Forum includes:
- A specialist conference of the Province of Styria,
- a symposium that explores how synergies between artistic practices and scientific strategies can address climate change,
- and the “KlimaHof” (Climate Farm), a venue for in-depth dialogic debate and experiments, represent the central format of the first Forum for Advanced Energy, Climate, and Weather Issues
Friday, July 13, 2012
7:00 pm BEGIN OF SYMPOSIUM
Multi-Purpose Hall, Krakauhintermühlen 27, 8854 Krakauhintermühlen
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Joachim Radkau (Bielefeld):
The environmental movement is the new enlightenment of our age. But also this green enlightenment contains the “dialectic of enlightenment” that Adorno and Horkheimer once revealed in the classical enlightenment of the eighteenth century: the more power it acquires, the more it is subject to the temptations of power and becomes a doctrine of rule with its own dogmatic. As never before the climate alarm has oriented environmental policy around the world toward a single goal, filled with a drive for “global governance”. But precisely this triumph could prove to be a crucial test for the environmental movement. Today “environmental protection” is often replaced with “climate protection”; but is the polar bear on the ice floe suitable as an icon for all forms of environmental protection? Is the catastrophe awareness suggested by the hockey stick climate curve appropriate for the establishment of a sound environmental policy?
Afterwards:
Cooking Catastrophes is a performance, a cooking show, and a reflection on the future. Before the eyes of the audience, top chefs serve up a multi-course menu consisting of forest fires, torrential rivers, avalanches, meteorite impacts, exploding oilrigs, and crashing jumbo jets. They smell and stink, can be pleasant or uncomfortable, but still can be served to spectators for a taste test.
Seasoned with expert knowledge and captured by a live camera that evokes our visual memories of a news reportage, the performance plays with the strong contradictions between pleasure and fear.
Cooks: Kane Do, Jim Löfdahl, Kristoffer Nilsson, Andreas Lindberg, Mariana Silva Varela, Filip Zubaczek, Peter Whaley
Camera: Marika Heidebäck
Design (menu): Byggstudio
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Outdoors in front of the Krakautal festival center with fair weather; inside the center with bad weather
Festival Center Krakauebene 29, 8854 Krakauhintermühlen (across from Gasthaus Ebnerwirt)
10:00 am – 1:00 pm:
Kick-off with “Wetterläuten” (Weather Bells)
Klaus S. Lackner, PhD (New York)
As we fly around in planes and drive around in cars we burn fuel. This combustion process produces carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas that supports plant growth and is generally considered harmless. However, it has its effects on planet Earth. The Earth is warmed by sunshine and carbon dioxide prevents the heat from leaving the planet, causing a noticeably warmer climate. The price we pay for ready electricity and convenient transportation is a warming climate with changing rainfall patterns and potentially disruptive changes in the world’s ecosystems.
It does not have to be that way. Just like we need to clean up after a picnic hiking in the mountains, we have to clean up after ourselves when flying across the Atlantic. In the case of carbon dioxide this is actually quite easy. We do not need to catch the same carbon dioxide molecule; any carbon dioxide anywhere in the air will do just fine. All that matters is how much carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere.
This insight motivated us to build a device that absorbs carbon dioxide from the air just like a tree. Its leaves can be packed more tightly than normal tree leaves because they do not need to see sunlight. Carbon dioxide molecules stick to these artificial leaves much more ferociously than to ordinary leaves. The artificial tree is about a thousand times faster than a real tree of the same size in collecting carbon dioxide. Just like a tractor that beats a horse in pulling a plow any day, these synthetic trees are much better carbon dioxide collectors than ordinary trees.
Now that we got the carbon dioxide back, we have to hide it somewhere. Or maybe we use the energy from a windmill and water from a lake to generate new fuel by “unburning” the carbon dioxide and water into gasoline and oxygen. This way the cycle is closed and no waste is produced.
Ralo Mayer (Vienna):
“Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” asked Steward Brand in 1966 during his campaign for the publication of apparently already existing NASA photos from space. In 1968, an Apollo astronaut then did actually make a photo, and Brand published his Whole Earth Catalog, a boundless compendium that provided rampantly spreading communes with all kinds of tips, tricks, and technologies.
Today, this picture of the Earth is quite likely the most published image of all. What today commonly goes without notice triggered an image-political revolution in the 1960s, which suddenly short-circuited the Cold War military-industrial complex with the alternative movement and gave the emerging environmental movement its icon. This video installation traces the history of this image and its links to seemingly far removed realms of world events in the last decades.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Lukas Meyer (Graz):
A just, effective, and global solution to the climate change problem is a goal worth striving for, in particular because the accelerating climate change brings along the high risk of violating fundamental rights of very many, especially future inhabitants of the planet. But what does this mean for today’s members of highly industrialized countries? Should they – and how should they – change their behavior? In his lecture, different answers to this question will be discussed, which are a product of alternative conceptions of morality.
Raimar Stange (Berlin)
Raimar Stange’s lecture “Klima, Kunst + Katastrophe” considers options for art in view of the climate change. Documentation and enlightenment, alternative pragmatism and self-confident retreat, accusation and sensitization, for example, are narratives that aesthetics can develop in light of the increasing uninhabitability of the Earth. Above all, however, a committed attitude is called for, and precisely from artists – from “artists as governors” (Theodor W. Adorno).
Vera Tollmann (Berlin)
The following events provide the context for my contribution: In 2009 the Copenhagen Climate Summit failed. At this point in time the international climate protection movements reached the height of their activities. Then anthropogenic catastrophes such as the explosion of “Deepwater Horizon” and the meltdown in Fukushima demonstrated the power of the multinationals. On the other hand, the protests of the Arab world and the Occupy movement influenced the self-conception of the climate activists. In reaction to the representation of climate change in the media, activists have developed new forms of protest and a new media-conscious image language which in part draws from artistic strategies. The significants are carefully chosen, just like in advertising. On the basis of examples I will present the rhetorical and self-referential aspects in activist image production.