Opening comments

Creative Resilience in Challenging Times

Artists at Risk (AR) and Ecologists at Risk (ER) as Peer Movements Standing for Resistance and Change

Christl Baur (DE), Simon Mraz (AT), Rafiul Alom Rahman (IN), Nina Bulgakova (UA), Kamya Ramachandran (IN), Maryam Sehhat (IR), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (AT), Marita Muukkonen (FI)

“Future is Merely a Part of the Past Which Has Been Forgotten”: Art under Political Repression

Indigene Harris (ZA), Mahsa Aleph (IR), Christoph Thun Hohenstein (AT), Leila Nachawati Rego (ES/SY)

From repositioning everyday acts of survival as radical practices of resistance to reckoning with the longevity of colonial violence, artists’ creative resistance to oppression grants necessary visibility to global issues, even as the possibility of their work is thrown into uncertainty by repressive regimes. This conversation will shed light on threats against creative freedom around the world, as well as the ways in which artists persevere, amplifying voices and experiences that might otherwise go unheard and unseen.

“When Home is a Forgotten Song”: Art under Ecological Collapse

Marita Muukkonen (FI), Taiye Ojo (NG), Mac Andre Arboleda (PH), Lucia Pietroiusti (IT)

Ecological degradation yields a very different form of displacement, seen through the increasingly common phenomenon of climate migration and even the climate change-induced experience of becoming alienated from one’s homeland without ever having to leave it. This panel will highlight the various modes artists employ in bearing witness to ecological collapse. Additionally, the conversation will explore how art thinking offers a unique space for prototyping Panelists: Taiye Ojo (NG), Mac Andre Arboleda (PH), Lucia Pietroiusti (IT) alternative relations between the human, natural and technological worlds, opening pathways toward better ecological configurations.

Introduction to UNESCO “Defending Creative Voices” Report

Klara Koštal (AT)

Earlier this year, UNESCO published a landmark report calling on the international community to increase efforts to support artists creating in zones of conflict. Klara Kostal of the Austrian UNESCO Commission will provide an overview of the report’s findings and strategies for safeguarding creative freedom amid emergency global situations.

September 11, 2022

At this talk, the State of the ART(ist) project is being introduced. The panel includes Martin Honzik of Ars Electronica, the two jurors Boris Magrini (Haus der Elektronischen Kunst Basel) and Marita Muukkonen (Artists at Risk) as well as representatives of the Austrian Foreign Ministry: Teresa Indjein, Head of the Section for International Cultural Affairs, and Simon Mraz, Project conception of State of the ART(ist) 2022.

September 10, 2022

Here, the award winners have their say. Christl Baur from Ars Electronica and Marita Muukkonen from Artists at Risk talk to the winners of State of the ART(ist) 2022 on site and in live broadcasts. Among them are Han Htoo Khant Paing and Karl Ingar Roys of the Peacock Generation project, Linda CH Lai and Michael Leung of the Floating Projects Collective, but also Danson Sylvester Kahyana, president of PEN Uganda, and Sara Nabil, artist and activist from Afghanistan, and Fadwa Mahmoud from Syria, one of the founders of the Families for Freedom movement.

September 9, 2022

Christl Baur of Ars Electronica and Björn Geldhof, director of PinchukArtCentre Kyiv, zoom into the Ukrainian art scene at its current state, also looking back into the years before. The talks include speakers like Liera Polianskova and Ivan Svitlychniy from SVITER Art Group, artists Dana Brezhnieva and Yuliia Makarenko, Oksana Chepelyk, Oleksandr Burlaka and Daria Pugachova.