Designing Collective Artist Residencies

Åse Eliason Bjurström,Natalia Eernstman,Kelli Rose Pearson,Anke De Vrieze,Arjen Evert Jan Wals

doi:10.2218/airea.5314

Abstract

Starting with an argument for a humanistic approach to climate change, this paper discusses the concept of the ‘Collective Artist Residency’ as a practicable means for engaging with complex socio-ecological issues that require collective answers. Through our analysis of the research project ‘Imaginative Disruptions,’ we propose that there is a need for creative spaces that include artists and non-artists alike, and which engender aimless play, inquisitive making and dialogic contemplation in the face of issues which are too painful, overwhelming and complex to rationally comprehend. We further argue that such residencies can generate comfortable, and even light-hearted, spaces in which people can be uncomfortable together. In other words, environments that feel safe and caring but that also encourage us to challenge status quos and experiment with alternatives via emotional, aesthetic, cognitive, somatic and social processing. The paper closes with five (suggested) guiding principles for designing a Collective Art Residency that supports groups of people to co-reflect upon their fragility whilst re-imagining present and future possibilities for being in the world: deeply participatory, balanced between comfortable / uncomfortable emotions, highly experiential, cross-sectoral and intergenerational, place-based.

Highlights

We write this article during the pandemic-induced global disruption that marks the beginning of the new decade
As charts of the epidemic show countries across the world rapidly moving between the peaks and troughs of infection and death, the slower-moving climate crisis continues to loom
The dominant approach has been to look to the natural sciences for more facts and statistics (Hulme 2011a) and employ primarily technocratic and structural solutions (Boyd 2017; Soete 2019)

Summary

Introduction

We write this article during the pandemic-induced global disruption that marks the beginning of the new decade. While there is a growing body of research around using art to communicate and to raise awareness about climate change (Roosen et al 2019) there is less information about the potential role of artistic practices in actual processes of generating climate mitigation and adaptation strategies To explore this topic, a group of academic partners initiated a project entitled Imaginative Disruptions, which took place between 2017 and 2019 across three European countries. Please do not adjust margins imagination exert significant influence on the shape of future social, cultural and political worlds, creating futures that we can’t predict and model Climate reductionism, he states, and the associated media focus on global climate calamities, arguably contributes to driving a collective perception of fatalism and human incapacity, in the face of an uncertain, climate-changed future. University classroom, local historic tower and 20 min walk between these two places in Gothenburg, Sweden

Design process

Methodology

Conclusions