Panel discussion
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.
Note: title inspired by quote from Taiye Ojo’s poem “Plague Swamp”
Chair
Marita Muukkonen (FI)
Panelists
Taiye Ojo (NG)
Mac Andre Arboleda (PH)
Lucia Pietroiusti (IT)
Taiye Ojo (NG)
Ojo Taiye is a Nigerian artist, eco-activist and writer who uses poetry as a handy tool to hide his frustration with society. His practice is collaborative and often draws from personal experience or interpretation of climate change, homelessness, migration as well as a breadth of transversal issues ranging from racism and black identity to mental health. His current project explores neocolonialism, institutionalized violence and ecological trauma in the oil-rich, polluted Niger delta. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Mycelia, The Spectacle, Salamander, Consequence, Stinging Fly, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Banshee, Willow Springs, Lambda Literary, Fiddlehead, Puritan, Frontier Poetry, Notre Dame Review, amd Strange Horizon. Taiye worked on the Future(s) 2021 with Catalyst Arts and Belfast Photo Festival; 2021 Sustrans Black History Month Art Project, 2021–22 Scene Stirling COP26 Climate Commission and switch art project 2021/2022.
Mac Andre Arboleda (PH)
Mac Andre Arboleda is an artist interested in exploring the sickness of the internet through research and dialogue, art and text, organizing and publishing. He is a master student of Media Arts Cultures under an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship.
Marita Muukkonen (FI)
Marita Muukkonen and Ivor Stodolsky (in alternating order) founded and direct Perpetuum Mobile (PM), which runs Ecologists at Risk (ER) and Artists at Risk (AR). Curatorial projects include: Alliances for Art at Risk (ZKM), Risk and Rebellion, AR Pavilion (four iterations including biennials), Pluriversity, School of the Displaced (Kyiv Biennial), Re-Aligned (10), Perpetual Romani Pavilion (Venice, Berlin, Moderna Museet), Arts Assembly (Manifesta, CAFA, Beaux Arts, +5) and Raw, Cooked, Packaged (Kiasma).