Summit Art:
"Sustaining the unsustainable" at the UN climate conferences
29 November
2023
Cotonificio,
auditorium
h 5 p.m.
conference by Linn Burchert Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin
Germany Project:
“Climate Summit Art. Art and Political Event, 1972 – 2022”
project funded by the
German Research Council
organised by Dipartimento di Culture del progetto, Scuola di dottorato
curated by Jacopo Galimberti
poster >>
abstract
Focussing on COP27 in
Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (2022), my presentation examines the role of art at
climate conferences (COPs) from a visual art, historical and ethnographic
perspective. In particular, I will explore whether the ineffective current
model of climate governance (and capitalism more generally) is somewhat
“re-enchanted” and legitimised through art, and whether the arts
offer any critique of, or alternatives to, what has been defined by Ingolfur
Blühdorn as a “post-ecological” constitution – a condition
that does not allow for overall systemic changes in terms of power but tends to
“sustain the unsustainable” through a simulative form of politics.
Linn Burchert is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute
of Art and Visual History, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Her 2019
dissertation, “The Image as Living Space: Ecological Concepts in Abstract
Modern Art, 1910-1960”, and investigated ecological and therapeutic
concepts in terms of the psychological and corporeal efficacy of abstract
modern painting. Linn Burchert’s most recent project is funded by the
German Research Foundation (DFG) and examines the role that has been played by
art within the framework of international climate summits since 1972. Her
monograph is provisionally titled “Climate Summit Art: Art and Political
Events, 1972–2022”.