State of the ART(ist), a collaboration between Ars Electronica and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, focuses on artists who face threats to their existence, whether in the form of political persecution or environmental disasters. This two-part panel discussion will focus first on the experiences of artists displaced by repressive regimes and state violence and will then explore myriad modes of bearing witness to—and acting against—ecological collapse.
-
“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.
-
“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.
-
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.
Credits
State of the ART(ist) is a collaboration between Ars Electronica and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.