The multiple transitions we are all facing requires us to challenge business-as-usual, across actors, sectors, and disciplines. The IA LAB project is the beginning of a resource site to share information and resources with colleagues in the artistic and cultural fields.
The project's aim is to offer artists and creatives a low-threshold access to information, skills, networks, and actors who are engaged in the societal challenges that are arising in various aspects due to the climate and biological diversity crisis and the implementation of the green shift. IA LAB aims to link large scale political programs and initiatives to a local context through a series of workshops and by sharing the information, questions, and reflections that arises from these gatherings.
Impact Attribution LAB provides a resource site for artists and creatives collecting information on various international, national and local initiatives and policy frameworks for the green shift. The focus will be on the ethical and aesthetic aspects of the green shift, where the possibilities for artistic contributions to just transitions, i.e. a fair green shift, will be discussed with researchers and advisers.
The societal transformation to come requires everyone to question the business-as-usual, within each discipline, sector, or mode of work. For the fields of the visual arts, we would like to explore a way to share a base of knowledge and resources with our peers that can be a support for any further art project across the sector that engages in societal challenges, to prevent individual artists having to re-invent the wheel or ending up all alone with a signature style.
The project Impact Attribution LAB is organized by Mari Sanden in close collaboration with Nabil Ahmed, Jens Badura, Prerna Bishnoi, Trude Bekk, Rita V. D'Oliveira Bouman, David Crombie, Jens Kaae Fisker, Maria Azucena Gutierrez Gonzalez, Stian Hansen/ Stormen kunst/dájdda, Steffen Håndlykken, Kristiane Marie Fjær Lindland, Joe Lockwood, Olga Lucko, Hanne Kristine Svinsås Magga, Caitlin Mandeville, Anders Riel Müller, Rodrigo Rimon Ghattas Pérez, Emil Røyrvik, Florian Schneider, August Valentin Schmidt, Daniela Björkenstam Stenbäck, Jane Sverdrupsen/Rogaland Kunstsenter, and Helene Ødegaard.
Impact Attribution LAB has been carried out with the support of Norsk Kulturfond.
The content of this site has been developed through three workshops.
We held the first workshop in Trondheim from 17 to 21 October, 2022. The participants were Rodrigo Rimon Ghattas Pérez, Prerna Bishnoi, August Valentin Schmidt, Daniela Björkenstam Stenbäck and Trude Bekk. The first workshop consisted of a series of conversations with experts whom we invited to help us begin mapping out various academic perspectives on the green shift that may be relevant to artistic practice.
Workshop #1 Art and Research
Workshop #1 was an introduction to the EU and national political research frameworks for the implementation of the green shift, such as Just Transitions, Citizen Science, mission oriented research, the European Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus, and more. We investigated how international frameworks have an impact on the plans of Trondheim Municipality and various projects at NTNU.
We started with philosopher Jens Badura, who teaches Transdisciplinarity at the Department of Cultural Analysis and Education at the Zurich Center for Creative Economies (ZCCE). He gave us a brief history of the development of artistic research as a complementary form of knowledge production, to gain an insight into the discourse on artistic research in a European context over the last decade and the institutionalisation of artistic research. We discussed with Jens the various positions for and against artistic research as a form of knowledge production. Jens presented his views on how artistic research can challenge and complement the epistemic frameworks for developing policies that will ensure a green and just transition.
Emil Røyrvik, Professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU, spent a whole day with us to help us explore the shift in focus from excellence research to the implementation and impact of a green and just transition. We discussed how policy implementation is not a topic that art academies usually teach. A focus on implementation opens up the possibility of engaging in political projects by anchoring policy in time and place. Emil discussed with us the role of art in encountering and relating to the ‘institutional’ (formal (state power) institutions that these frameworks represent).
We continued the workshop with David Crombie, coordinator of Cyanotypes, a Blueprint Skills Alliance, which aims to map and present urgent and future needs for knowledge and skills for the creative and cultural sector across Europe. David has a unique understanding of the challenges and opportunities for how artistic knowledge, methods and working practices can be incorporated into larger initiatives and thus contribute to improving research and education in general. With David, we had an exciting discussion about instrumentalisation and how we can ethically and with professional integrity navigate between contributing to creating change while not being instrumentalised for a cause we do not support.
Researcher Rita Vasconcellos d'Oliveira Bouman gave us a three-hour introduction to how the concept of just transitions has been promoted and is currently used at EU, national and regional levels. Rita is a researcher at SINTEF and an expert on the challenges surrounding a just and sustainable energy transition. Research fellow Caitlin Mandeville gave us a presentation on citizen science and her experience teaching the EIT course ‘Saving the world is not rocket science’.
We rounded off the workshop in Trondheim with a discussion with Maria Azucena Gutierrez Gonzalez, who is project manager for urban development and culture at NTNU & Trondheim Municipality, about the type of knowledge and skills we as artists need in order to contribute to these larger initiatives, whether in a municipal or university context. We asked Maria to reflect on the differences between research projects, collaborative networks, municipal projects and other types of projects. It can be useful to try to understand how institutions in different sectors shape their own goals, expectations, motivations and methods for starting a project, and how these projects may or may not be compatible with, for example, an art project.
Workshop #2: 12 questions for green and just transitions
In 2022, Stavanger municipality was selected to participate in two ambitious programs of the EU Commission. Firstly, Stavanger aims at becoming one of 112 climate neutral cities in Europe (?) by 2030. Next, it is also one of five lighthouse cities that will showcase the New European Bauhaus initiative. These commitments entail rapid transformations of Stavanger as we know it. Reaching far beyond technical solutions, both projects draw attention to the ethical and aesthetic challenges embedded in or resulting from the transformations to come. These transformations will change our culture and everyday life while also questioning the city’s identity and branding as the oil-city of Norway.
What is the role of art and culture in these transformations? Cultural workers and producers are required to, not only self-critically rethink their own ways of working, but also to consider if and how to contribute to green and just transitions.
The IA LAB’s round table session in Stavanger gathered researchers, strategic advisors, artists and creatives to share their professional perspectives on the implementation of these measures. As we begin a green and just transition, what ethical and aesthetic imperatives are most relevant and urgent to address?
The workshop in Stavanger was held from 24 to 28 October, 2022. The participants who followed the programme throughout the week were Mari Sanden, Helene Ødegaard, Florian Schneider, Joe Lockwood, Rodrigo Rimon Ghattas Pérez, Prerna Bishnoi, August Valentin Schmidt, and Daniela Björkenstam Stenbäck. The main part of this workshop consisted of a seminar at Rogaland Kunstsenter, where we invited researchers and the public to share and contribute to the discussion.
26 October consisted of a closed working session and an open discussion with the audience in the evening. For the afternoon session, we organised presentations by Associate Professor Anders Riel Müller, Jens Kaae Fisker and Kristiane Marie Fjær Lindland from the research group Social and Spatial Justice in Times of Transition at the University of Stavanger. We received contributions from strategic advisors and innovation experts such as Helene Ødegaard, advisor at Smart City Stavanger in the municipality of Stavanger, and Joe Lockwood, innovation expert and initiator of various innovation ecosystems in Europe. We were joined by Steffen Håndlykken, artist and chair of UKS (Young Artists‘ Society), along with other members to bring in the perspectives of the Young Artists’ Society.
In the evening, we opened up for a conversation with the audience. We announced the event through our partners' media channels and through the Artistic Research Forum, which was held in Stavanger at the same time. The motivation was to take advantage of all the visitors to Stavanger from various artistic communities in Norway in order to have both a local and national perspective. There were between 20 and 30 of us in the audience who spent over three hours discussing the Roundtable discussion: Twelve questions for green and just transitions. We invited all IA LAB participants and guests to bring a question and prepare a short 3-5 minute statement on why this question is important. We had an open conversation where each participant presented their point of view.
Working session #3 Counter Aesthetic Strategies for Climate Justice
IA LAB addresses the challenges and opportunities for art and culture in a just climate transition. This topic has seen enormous growth in interest and dynamic development among practitioners, organisations, support structures and agencies within the cultural sector and beyond in recent years.
The capacity and responsibility of arts and culture actors to engage in the climate crisis has been taken seriously and prioritised in cultural policy at EU and national level. National cultural councils in various countries have established dedicated support schemes for work on the climate crisis, such as in England, Scotland and Ireland.
We can see a similar trend in the research sector, strongly driven by the Horizon Europe research programme, with initiatives that highlight art and culture as relevant drivers of the green transition, such as in New European Bauhaus, in pillar 2 Cluster 2 Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, in the new KIC for Culture & Creativity and a Blueprint Skills Alliance for culture and creativity Cyanotypes. Mari Sanden, who has been the leader of IA LAB, has been involved in all these programmes during the project period and is the project manager for PACESETTERS, a research project funded by Horizon Europe that investigates how art and culture, cultural heritage and creativity can not only adapt to the climate crisis but also be drivers of the green transition.
The third workshop for IA LAB was therefore changed in relation to the application text in order to make the most of these new opportunities that have opened up and to be able to connect a number of different projects, with researchers, artists, administrators and activists. The focus on a just green transition is all the more important to highlight, and the experiences from a number of European projects and networks that investigate topics relevant to IA LAB indicate that there is a need for cross-sector dialogue on the underlying ethical, aesthetic and political aspects that help shape energy policy, among other things.
The struggle of Sami reindeer herders against new wind farms and what can be called a form of green colonialism crystallises a new political landscape that must be navigated in order to understand and support a just green transition. Art and cultural actors can play an important role in highlighting political, ethical and aesthetic aspects and the broader historical perspectives, such as the consequences of the Norwegianisation process. It is important to highlight these experiences in a European and global perspective as well.
In discussions with the leaders of another research project, Climate Rights, Nabil Ahmed and Olga Lucko, it became clear that we can use IA LAB to facilitate a discussion on justice in the green transition with researchers, artists and activists across research projects and cultural institutions. The third workshop was therefore held in synergy with the opening of an exhibition, ØYFJELLET: From the Frontline of Land Rights in Sápmi, in Bodø, with the support of the Northern Norwegian Art Museum, Artica Svalbard and Bodø 2024.
More information about the exhibition can be found here:
https://www.articasvalbard.no/2024/exhibition-from-the-frontline-of-land-rights-in-spmi
The third workshop in IA LAB was entitled Counter Aesthetic Strategies for Climate Justice. Its aim was to share perspectives and approaches to the ethical, political and aesthetic challenges associated with climate justice. We brought together artists and researchers from both inside and outside academia to discuss ethical and aesthetic aspects of the ongoing climate crisis and green transition policy through the lens of climate justice. The workshop was conducted as a collaboration between the research projects Climate Rights, INTERPRT, IA LAB, PACESETTERS, with the support of Stormen kunst/dájdda in Bodø.
Participants were invited to share their perspectives on specific challenges and propose responses or approaches to address them. These ranged from exploring the role of visual documentation in climate justice, to discussing myths about influence and impact, to deconstructing companies' communication strategies for social influence and reputation, and to sharing examples of new alliances between trade unions, workers and researchers who are trying to take matters into their own hands.
Instead of providing a comprehensive overview and conclusions on this complex topic, we chose to focus on sharing different approaches, challenges and strategies for how to tackle and navigate the complexity and the various ethical considerations and responsibilities that artists and researchers should be aware of.
To gain a deeper insight into the challenges of a fair green transition, we invited two activists, Hanne Kristine Svinsås Magga and Svein Ole Granefjell, who work to support the Sami cultural community, with a focus on health and cooperation with the Protect Sápmi Foundation, which provides advice and assistance and participates in negotiations on behalf of Sami interests as a basis for new activities in the Sami areas.
Hanne Kristine Svinsås Magga highlighted some of the key challenges of achieving a just green transition, focusing on past and ongoing injustices towards Indigenous and minority groups from a broader historical perspective. She introduced the project Suodji/Suaja/Suodje, owned by the Saami Council, which originated from experiences gained through the work of the Facebook group ‘Duođaš Sámecielaheami - dokumenter samehetsen’, established in 2017. Initially, the group aimed to expose the extent and severity of hate speech directed at Sámi people within the majority community. Over time, it evolved into a counseling and support resource for individuals experiencing harassment, homophobia, and prejudice, managed by administrators in their spare time.