In these monthly updates we’ll be sharing recent developments and happenings from our studio – expect to be the first privy to new openings, traveling exhibitions, forthcoming talks, projects-in-progress, and our behind-the-scenes research.
New Work
Safe and Just Futures
For Earth Commission and World Economic Forum
One of the most important pieces of recent climate research surfaced what had long been under-recognised in the science community: If our future is to be liveable we need targets beyond climate; a liveable future depends on the interdependence of human and more-than-human wellbeing AND the resilience of the earth system. Safety and justice must be accounted for.
In the paper (published in nature and available to read online for free), the scientists focus on how we can stay within five of the nine planetary boundaries that are critical to stabilising the Earth system: Climate, Biosphere, Freshwater, Nutrients and Aerosols. These boundaries are informing a new generation of interconnected science-based targets to help avoid dangerous tipping points in the Earth system.
“For the first time, safety and justice for humanity on Earth is assessed and quantified for the same control variables regulating life support and Earth stability.”
Earth Commission, Global Commons Alliance. Published 31 May 2023
We were thrilled to partner with Earth Commission and leading scientists to begin to explore what these ‘safe and just earth system boundaries’ might look and feel like. Our interpretations of the research were recently presented at World Economic Forum, Davos and the work is now available to view online where you can read more about how safety and justice (that is distributed inter-species, inter-generationally and intra-generationally) is imperative for a liveable future.
Our Travels
(New York City; Salem, Massachusetts; Sapporo, Hokkaido)
COAL + ICE
Asia Society, New York (13.02– 11.08, 2024)
Our immersive installation ‘New York, 2050: A Possible Future’, first created for IKEA/Ingka Group’s Action Speaks summit in New York, now features in ‘COAL + ICE’ at Asia Society, an immersive photography and video exhibition accompanied by a series of related programs. COAL + ICE brings together over 50 artists to visualize the causes and consequences of the climate crisis as well as foreground positive innovation and adaptation.
Above you can see some install shots of the New York skyline doused in a toxic orange light, taken on-site last week.
Our Time on Earth
Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts (17.02–09.06 2024)
‘Refuge for Resurgence’ has travelled to Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts, the host of ‘Our Time on Earth’. First shown at Barbican Centre, London, the exhibition celebrates the power of global creativity to transform the conversation around the climate emergency. Inviting audiences to imagine their ideal future world, the show asks How will we use the precious time we have here? What will it take to live together in harmony?
For those already familiar with Refuge you’ll know that the multispecies banquet has a seat at the table allocated for a fox, rat, wasp, pigeon, cow, human adults and child, wild boar, snake, beaver, raven, mushroom and wolf. Each place setting features a different food offering and bespoke cutlery specific to the guest. When Refuge arrived at Peabody some of the wolf fur was in need of replacement, the brilliant curators found a wolf sanctuary in Massachusetts who donated some fur from a beautiful local wolf named Linnea!
2124–Where the Future Begins
Future Theatre, Sapporo International Art Festival 2024 (20.01–25.02, 2024)
Closing soon! Gathering future mythologies that tell of deep transformative change over the course of 100+ years, in this show you’ll find an adapted version of our speculative myth ‘Refuge for Resurgence’.
5 things that have caught our attention…
(organs played slowly, trees vs roads, toxic air, banquets of extinct food and AI of course)
Thinking, listening and playing As Slow As Possible
On Monday 5th February, Organ² / ASLSP – a 639-year-long John Cage organ piece – changed chord for the first time in two years. The work, whose acronym ASLSP stands for ‘As Slow as Possible’ was scored by Cage in 1987, and in 2001 The organ of the Burchardi Church, Halberstadt, began to play the piece. With a scheduled duration of 639 years, the Halberstadt organ will play its final chord in the year 2640. This makes it the longest running non-computerized piece currently being performed. Cage’s piece and the Halberstadt performance really resonates with our focus on long-term thinking, how it can be measured, sustained and encouraged. This embodiment of patience and commitment gives us hope.What we care for, and how
This two-year old video of a tree in Japan being relocated to make way for a road resurfaced on our instagram feed and got us thinking about hierarchies of care. Often when it comes to choosing between new roads or nature conservation, transport routes trump all, anything in the way gets felled, flattened, paved over, draining biodiversity, memory and meaning from the landscape. Last November Shropshire county council approved a new road scheme known as the North West Relief Road at Shrewsbury, the construction of which would entail felling Darwin Oak, a 550-year-old, open-grown, ancient oak tree. These extremes of either-or, and the refusal of coexistence and compromise, returned us to thinking about what we care for/about and how we demonstrate care. The Japanese relocation of a tree is acknowledgement of it as a living being. We encourage readers to revisit this article on the Japanese veneration of trees in Harvard’s Arnoldia (Volume 77, Issue 4), a quarterly magazine exploring knowledge, experience, and imagination wherever they entangle with the nature of trees.AI and the Global South
We are watching Studio B: Unscripted’s new series: AI and Global South. In the first dialogue, Nobel peace prize laureate Maria Ressa and Urvashi Aneja explore the impact AI is already having on communities in the Global South – from labour conditions to democracy and the environment – raising questions over who stands to gain from the technology and at what cost. We love the conversations facilitated by Studio B and this series looks to be a cutting and critical look beyond the current AI hype.Queering Air in Toxic Polluted Worlds
We attended the launch of Nerea Calvillo's new book Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds (2023) published by Columbia University press. The event, held at Goldsmiths, invited scholars and artists (including Cooking Sections and Dancing New Ecologies) to engage with the book's themes.Contesting solution oriented bureaucratic regimes that seek to ‘manage’ air, Aeropolis instead thinks of air itself as city-like in its myriad social, cultural, political, ecological entanglements. A fascinating fusion of feminist technoscience and queer ecological frameworks, we loved Calvillo’s uplifting of “designing-thinking-making” as a methodology for both designers and citizens to move toward more just and equitable futures. We really recommend you grab a copy of the book!
A Banquet of Near-Extinct Ingredients
At the end of January, former white house chef Sam Kass partnered with Andrew Zimmern to host his ‘Last Supper’ as part of the Great Northern festival in Minneapolis. Kass ‘Last Supper’ was first hosted in 2015 as part of COP21 and has since been to Davos and all over the US. The premise of the meal is simple: Kass crafts a menu wherein all the foods are legitimately affected by the climate crisis. Coffee, wine and chocolate feature prominently, emblematic of food and drink that gives us the most pleasure and yet could suffer from major crop loss with only the slightest warming. The menu also reminded us of the work of Cooking Sections (mentioned above) and their performative installation exploring how farmed salmon have turned grey and how the changing colours of species around the planet are warning signs of an environmental crisis.
Kass’ dinners are an impactful total-work-of-art that reveals just how intertwined and interdependent agriculture, climate, culture and sociality are. And we aren’t at all biased in our love of a banquet-cum-artwork.