Climate Crisis >> Art Action Takeover

18.00 – 22.00 – Bar open

18.00 – 19.00 – AGOSTINO & Misha Faulty B2B (DJ Set)

19.00-20.00 – AGOSTINO (DJ Set)

20.00 – 21.00 – Tropical Waste (DJ Set)

21.00 – 21.30 Chooc Ly Tan (Soundscape)
Earth Friction: Geological Forces_Forced Nature 

For this soundscape, Chooc Ly Tan draws inspiration from their fascination with natural phenomena and volcanic activities, as well as research into the work of indigenous and diasporic activists, and ongoing imperialist exploitations in countries that are rich in natural resources. The performance collages field recordings of geothermal activities with excerpts from speeches by Indigenous activists and electronic beats and beeps, bass and anger, using intense industrial sound and vocals.

19.00 – 20.00 – Panel Discussion: Oceans 

The latest in the Documents of Contemporary Art series of anthologies, Oceans attends to the inextricable human and nonhuman agencies that affect and are affected by the sea and its running currents within contemporary art and visual culture. Join guest editors Pandora Syperek and Sarah Wade, along with artist Kasia Molga and curator Bergit Arends.  

20.10 – 20.30 – Screening: The Word for Water is Whale – Zadie Xa  

What information – spiritual, technological or otherwise – happens at a cellular level as sonic waves ebb and flow across water? And what are the unearthed narratives and secrets that can be gleaned from the rumbling frequencies of the marine world?    

20.30 – 21.00 – Screening: Treeline – Ruth Maclennan 

Treeline is a collectively made film compiled from hundreds of hours of footage of forests submitted by people across the world. From a patchwork of contributions (sent in by scientists, ecologists, artists and members of the public alike), Maclennan traces a sinuous green line that stretches from the wild woods of North America to the rainforests of the Amazon to the copses of middle England and the scrublands of Africa, as well as myriad places in-between. 

19.15 – 20.45 – Storytelling Interconnectedness 

Advance booking required. This workshop is now fully booked.
To find out about last minute availability, speak to the information desk on the night. 

A hands-on workshop using speculative fiction, analogue and Map Layers with Google Earth Creation Tools facilitated by Angela YT Chan. 

Narrating the climate crisis is multifaceted – we can describe our experiences in multiple time scales, real and imaginary places and multispecies actors, emotions and more. To think about how climate changes the world around us, we look to cartography, specifically how maps are layered with information and how we can take the lead in authoring the stories they tell.  

We will use a web browser for ‘Google Earth Creation Tools’ to create a multispecies / multi-landscaped climate change story that blends imagination and facts within a real world setting. We will create digital and analogue assets (objects like photos, gifs, videos, photos of drawings/collages/ handwriting) to upload onto our digital map. This can be played back in Google Earth in 2D and 3D. 

This workshop requires use of a web browser – we will supply some equipment but participants are also encouraged to bring their own laptop if possible. 

Chooc Ly Tan is a multi-disciplinary artist, DJ and voyager who works across moving image, DJ sets, radio podcasts and club nights. Her practice sets out to create new visions of reality by subverting or repurposing systems and tools we use to understand the world around us – such as concepts and methodologies from physics, politics and music. 

Angela YT Chan is an independent researcher, curator and artist. Her work reconfigures power in relation to the inequity of climate change, through self-archiving, rethinking geographies and speculative fiction. Her recent research-art commissions span climate framings, water scarcity and conflict, and has held residencies with Arts Catalyst, FACT/Jerwood Arts’ Digital Fellowship and Sonic Acts’ environmental research residency. Angela has produced curatorial projects and workshops as Worm: art + ecology, and continues to collaborate with artists, activists and youth groups under her own name. 

Pandora Syperek is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University London, and Visiting Fellow at the V&A Research Institute. Her research examines the intersections of science, gender and the nonhuman within modern and contemporary art and cultures of display. Pandora was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art from 2016-2017 and she holds a PhD in the History of Art from University College London.

Sarah Wade is an art historian and Lecturer in Museum Studies at University of East Anglia. Her research examines human-animal relations and representations of wildlife in contemporary art and exhibitions, particularly with regards to ecological concerns. Sarah has published on wildlife conservation, ocean ecology and extinction in artistic and curatorial practice. She is co-founder (with Pandora Syperek) of the Curating the Sea research project, which resulted in a special issue of Journal of Curatorial Studies (2020), Oceans: Documents of Contemporary Art (2023), and the current Paul Mellon Centre funded project ‘Exhibiting Oceans in the UK Today’. Sarah gained her PhD in the History of Art from UCL and over the years has worked with various museums, arts, and heritage organisations.

Ruth MacLennan (b. London 1969) is an artist and writer. Her work includes films, multi-channel moving image works, photographs, performances, and writing. Her recent films examine how the climate emergency has irrevocably transformed ways of seeing and understanding landscape and place – both for inhabitants, and as representation. 

Zadie Xa was born and raised in Vancouver on the unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, and is now based in London, UK. Her work is informed by her experiences within the Korean diaspora, as well as the environmental and cultural context of the Pacific Northwest. Her work often features garments, including cloaks and masks, used for live performance and within installation or moving image. Throughout her practice, Xa uses water and marine ecologies as metaphors for exploring the unknown, whilst also alluding to abstract notions of homeland. 

Kasia Molga (UK/PL) has refused to be labeled – design fusionist, artist, environmentalist, creative coder and technologist who for over a decade has sought ways of collaboration with nature, predominantly focusing on the ever-changing human relation to and perception of the natural environment and fellow ‘earthlings’. Her award winning work has been exhibited worldwide (i,e. Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, MIS (BR), Centre Pompidou and more). Kasia took part in many international art & science residencies and has lectured and mentored regularly in the EU and UK. Kasia grew up on merchant navy vessels traveling with her sailor father and holds a diving license.

Bergit Arends is a curator of contemporary art and currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has curated many contemporary art projects for the natural history museums in London (2005–2013), such as Galápagos (2012–2013) and Tania Kovats TREE (2009), and in Berlin, including Elizabeth Price BERLINWAL (2018). She publishes widely, recently on critical engagements with the natural sciences, ‘Unequal Earth’ in (NaturKultur 2021), The Botanical City (2020), Botanical Drift (2018), and on decolonising natural history museums (Art in Science Museums 2019). Bergit currently works on montage and the Anthropocene. 

AGOSTINO is the alias of London-based visual artist, DJ, and music producer Agostino Quaranta. In 2018, he started Turbo Sud, a research-based project aiming to create a conversation around the sonic traditions of South Italy through live performances, exhibitions, collaborations, experimental documentaries, and research. As part of this practice, he shapes music inspired by imaginary and factual memories about the micro-history of Tecnopizzica: forgotten attempts from the early nineties to computerise Puglia’s traditional music style, Pizzica Salentina. Agostino has recorded shows for radios, including NTS, Radio Raheem, and Foundation FM, performed at electronic music festivals between the UK and Italy, and had a solo exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with the honour to DJ inside the Deer Shelter Skyspace by James Turrell.

Misha Faulty graduated from Goldsmiths University in 2017 and has performed in Vienna, Zagreb and London. Over the last 3 years they have been digging into abysses of electronic sounds that collapse and reform, sweaty and jittering. They have released an EP, I Trusted You, and are currently working on an album to be released on Multibody Records. Their influences include S280F, Kavari, Klein and M.E.S.H.