CARBON T: +44 (0)117 917 2300 / 01 CLIMATE WWW.ARNOLFINI.ORG.UK C WORDS 3 OCTOBER – CAPITAL 29 NOVEMBER HOW DID YOU GET HERE AND WHERE ARE WE GOING? CULTURE 2009 PLATFORM WITH 7 NEW COMMISSIONS: Opening night – join us! African Writers Abroad, Ackroyd & Harvey, ARNOLFINI Institute for the Art & Practice of Dissent at Home, SATURDAY, 3 OCTOBER 5 –7PM Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, Please join us at Arnolfini for the opening plus a full Hollington & Kyprianou with Tamasin Cave & weekend of events, starting at 11.30am on Saturday with Who’s Recuperating Who? Part 1. Spinwatch, Trapese Collective, Virtual Migrants www.platformlondon.org For full season event listings see pages 10 – 14 The energy and climate-change crisis stands as a unique social and ecological challenge... Those least responsible for climate change are the worst affected by it... VANDANA SHIVA, INDIAN ACTIVIST Manifold explosion, K-dere, to courses on creativity and social bailing-out of Royal Bank of Scotland. LONDON-BASED ARTS, SOCIAL Ogoniland, Nigeria, 2009. justice; interventionist installations All of these and more are explored in Photo: Eracks Kobah to skill-shares on ecological systems. greater detail later in this newspaper, JUSTICE AND ECOLOGY GROUP and many will feature ‘live’ during This kind of practice places its work the season’s events, alongside in the thick of political and cultural Evenings and weekends are packed the concerns of PLATFORM’s PLATFORM AND COLLABORATORS change, and C Words reflects this. with events, courses, film screenings, collaborators. This year, PLATFORM’s work includes discussions and actions in the PRESENT INSTALLATIONS, key campaigning for the court case These issues may appear to be gallery and throughout Arnolfini. The against Shell in New York over the the business of a purely activist season builds towards the moment execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the organisation, yet PLATFORM’s PERFORMANCES, ACTIONS, of departure to the site of COP 15 Ogoni 9 – the Shell Guilty campaign. approach to creativity, research and in Copenhagen in December, where PLATFORM and Greenpeace have collaboration is one reason that this WALKS, COURSES AND many C Words collaborators will be also provided authoritative analysis of work has been increasingly effective in independently active. DISCUSSIONS AT ARNOLFINI. the Canadian Tar Sands, encouraging provoking real change. This approach As the central part of Arnolfini’s 100 institutional investors to question derives from PLATFORM’s straddling these developments. Together with of art, education and activism and C Words, presented over 50 days, UN Conference of the Parties on Days season, this powerful gathering World Development Movement it’s an approach recognised by the forms a collaborative investigation into Climate Change (COP 15) which of 60 artists, activists, campaigners and People & Planet, PLATFORM wider cultural world. In the past year, carbon, climate, capital and culture. opens on 7 December. For this season and educators will converge, bringing is contesting HM Treasury’s lack the group has been invited to present This broad critique of dependency PLATFORM has brought together diverse practices ranging from of adequate environmental and current work at events at Iniva on fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, and a host of collaborators to present solidarity work with diaspora and human rights considerations in the (London), Artsadmin (London), the the implications for human rights, seven major new commissions, migrant communities to art as direct investment framework laid out for the continued on page 3 takes place in advance of the 15th performances and installations. action; from performance poetry C WORDS – CARBON, CLIMATE, CAPITAL, CULTURE 3 OCTOBER – 29 NOVEMBER 2009 PAGE 2 The Carbon Map, Ultimate Holding Company, 2007. A Commission by PLATFORM for the Transport Planning Society. AS PART OF THE 100 DAYS SEASON, MARKING THE COUNTDOWN TO THE 15TH UN CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES ON CLIMATE CHANGE (COP 15) OPENING IN COPENHAGEN ON 7 DECEMBER 2009, ARNOLFINI HAS INVITED THE LONDON-BASED ARTIST/ACTIVIST GROUP PLATFORM TO DEVELOP AN EXHIBITION AROUND THE KEY THEMES OF THEIR 25 YEARS OF PRACTICE. There is of course a long tradition of artist/activists within C Words, sets out to explore the tangled web of Carbon, contemporary art, from Joseph Beuys to the Artists Climate, Capital and Culture and our implications within ... C Words sets out Placement Group, the feminist art movement of the 1970s it. Whether in terms of our own personal choices around to the current arts & ecology agenda. PLATFORM describes travel or participation in the culture of consumerism, or to explore the tangled its methodology as bringing together environmentalists, institutionally, through funding and the movement of art artists, human rights campaigners, educationalists and and artists around the world, we are all inextricably linked community activists to create innovative projects driven by with the politics of oil. Through an extraordinary range web of Carbon, Climate, the need for social and environmental justice. In particular, of projects, performances, film screenings, debate and PLATFORM’s work in challenging the economic interests courses around issues of climate change, social justice Capital and Culture, of dependency on fossil fuels and the implications in terms and the contested relationship between art and activism, of human rights as well as environmental impact, has PLATFORM and their partners invite you to join them in been highly influential. This summer alone, for example, this investigation. and our implications the Remember Saro-Wiwa campaign, co-ordinated by PLATFORM, helped support the court case against Shell TOM TREVOR within it. in New York over the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 9 in Nigeria. While in the UK, working in partnership DIRECTOR, ARNOLFINI with the World Development Movement and People & Planet, PLATFORM launched a legal action against the Treasury for allowing public money, poured into the Royal Bank of Scotland, to be invested in energy companies and projects linked to climate change and human rights violations. Rather than see this invitation from Arnolfini as simply an opportunity for a self-congratulatory retrospective, PLATFORM chose instead to focus on the next 25 years and to share this inquiry with a network of groups they have worked with previously, asking the question: How did you get here and where are we going? The resulting project, C WORDS – CARBON, CLIMATE, CAPITAL, CULTURE 3 OCTOBER – 29 NOVEMBER 2009 PAGE 3 C Words: PLATFORM with 7 new commissions from African Writers Abroad, Ackroyd & Harvey, Institute for the Art Questions for the & Practice of Dissent at Home, Laboratory of Insurrectionary Next 25 Years Imagination, Hollington & Kyprianou with Tamasin Cave & Posed to members of PLATFORM and commissioned groups as part of the brief, Spinwatch, Trapese Collective, Virtual Migrants; and events with and now posed to you. Amelia’s Magazine, Art Not Oil, Carbon Trade Watch, Corner House, Feral Trade, FERN, Greenpeace, Live Art Development Agency, new 1 How does thinking about economics foundation & Clare Patey, Sustrans – Art & the Travelling the next 25 years make Landscape, Ultimate Holding Company and others. you feel? Carbon trading – the ability of COP 15 AND companies and countries to trade URGENCY OF 2 What do you think the ‘permits to pollute’ amongst CLIMATE JUSTICE themselves in order to meet reduction SLOWNESS targets – has been increasingly The upcoming COP 15 is hailed At the heart of C Words is a concern world will look like in 25 criticised on grounds of social inequity by many as a pivotal moment in to match deeds with words. How can since it was introduced into the international politics. World leaders, UK culture - which is used to cheap years time? negotiations in 1997. Yet, it is likely civil society representatives, energy on demand - operate in a low that such ‘permits to pollute’, dubious scientists, journalists and activists carbon world? Using C Words and carbon offsets, and other ingenuities will be congregating to thrash out the Arnolfini as an experimental site, of capitalism will be presented ever international climate change treaty PLATFORM and collaborators attempt more strongly as the solution, a 3 What will be the biggest that is supposed to limit the extent of to operate with carbon-consciousness solution which will do little to halt the climate crisis, a successor to the and action throughout production, climate change and a lot to hinder issues facing the world Kyoto Protocol of 1997. transportation and installation. More climate justice. than that, the season also looks at The talks represent a key landmark in between now and then? While Northern countries swamp the how aspects such as finance can act the Kyoto process because the parties talks with armies of highly trained as a hidden driver of climate change. are supposed to finalise an emissions negotiators and corporate lobbyists, Sponsorship, pensions, investment, reduction framework that will take the many of the communities at the bank and savings accounts are a world beyond 2012 when the initial frontline of climate devastation, major part of this story, yet rarely 4 Where will you be, what phase of the treaty ends. At the same such as Indigenous Peoples, small come into the public eye, most often time, some people feel that a lot of island states, peasant farmers, women overshadowed by concerns with will you be doing in 2034? the energy in campaigning