Climate Research Project
To whom it may concern,
This is something a little different than a submission call, we are seeking help with a research project.
We (Joa&P) and the Llano del Rio Collective are collaborating on a project charting concrete and abstract ecological relations that people operate within to address, bolster and alter (through creative work) their relationships to a changing world. The project will use the metaphors of geology and weather to add to a conversation about what it is to live, create, and challenge our changing world. We aim to locate these tectonics and humors, and identify the characters of forces working to sustain and reshape our ecological world.
In a country like France, where radioactive clouds stop at the border and where we aren't afraid to build a cancer research center on the former site of a nitrogen fertilizer factory that has been condemned by the EU's industrial safety agency, we should count less on "natural" crises than on social ones. It is usually up to the social movements to interrupt the normal course of the disaster.
-The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection
When it is necessary to change an automobile tire, open an abscess or plow a vineyard, it is easy to imagine a quite limited operation. The elements on which the action is brought to bear are not completely isolated from the rest of the world, but it is possible to act on them as if they were: One can complete the operation without once needing to consider the whole, of which the tire, the abscess or the vineyard is nevertheless an integral part.
- Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share
Dogs are about the inescapable, contradictory story of relationships- co-constitutive relationships in which none of the partners pre-exist the relating, and the relating is never done once and for all. Historical specificity and contingent mutability all the way down, into nature and culture, into naturecultures. There is no contingent mutability rule all the way down, into nature and culture, into natureculture. There is no foundation; there are only elephants supporting elephants all the way down.
-Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto
Life is built on relations. Climate change dramatically alters the terms of these relations. Action and creativity alter these relationships to end harmful patterns and facilitate the emergence of more healthy ecological relations; between people, between individuals and natural systems, and between humans and the economies they exist within.
The Project
We are interested in sighting these emerging creative practices and actions.
Toward this effort we are hoping to survey the land to create a guide to the humors working today. Whether you’re creating projects that change the perception or alter our dependence on oil, reframe our relationship to extractive technology and the abstraction of resources, re-network the material and emotional routes against and beyond oil-time, or explore the metaphors of energy itself, we’d love to hear from you.
The Climate Change/Change the Climate guide will be a practical and projective resource for individuals looking for ways to plug-in to a biological struggle.
Please send us simply:
1. the name of your project
2. The location where your work functions.
3. website or online reference to the project
4. A simple description (one paragraph tops please!) of what you are doing.
All submissions will be considered for inclusion in this guide.
Deadline and mailing
Please mail it to us by February 1st, 2016
Mail to editors(at)joaap.org
Warmest Regards, In Cahoots...
(ps. As Climate Games says, "We are nature defending itself)
(pps. we've also really been digging Jason W. Moore, Frans Fanon, Amaia Pérez Orozco, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Montse Galseran for the ideas we've been thinking through on this... and many more.)