"A future beyond the Anthropocene"
"Will there be a future beyond the Anthropocene? If the alarm bell for the “limit to growth” was already rang half centru ago, but was not heard to usher swift change, how could we make it happen now? If the material and individual well-being is a decisive factor that obstructed the necessary swift response in a planetary scale, one way towards the change might be reenvisioning the idea of living well.
Appealing to the notion of living well is particularly relevant to the field of art, because art offers new perspectives and visions, experiences and resenticization on living well. Good life is the domain of care and maintenance and contingent to the condition of reproduction which includes eating and feeding, sleeping to, hanging out, being regenerative for its own sake for the feeling of fullness.
There is an intrinsic value in art in the way that when you have “art” in life it could mean a good life. But as we know, there is a problem. This good life with art may be exclusive to a certain group of people or allowed only in a temporarily suspended zone of museum walls and the alienation from the life condition. We needs to redefine what makes life good, such as “buen vivir” based on the principles of the contemporary commons-paradigm. With such visión from art, we need to interfere into the broad everyday field where life is largely maintained, cared and reproduced, and the field that shapes it."
Binna Choi, Director, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht, Netherlands
The CIMAM 2021 Annual Conference was held on November 5-7, 2021, hosted as initially planned by the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz and the NOMUS New Art Museum/ Branch of the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland.
During the three days of discussions, the conference focused on the two interconnected current crises of Xenophobia and Climate Change, and the sometimes hidden or unexplored connections between the two.
Keynote speakers and relevant case-study presentations showed how institutions, artists, and thinkers working together can provide practical laboratories concerning these emerging issues and offer methodological tools to combat discriminatory and nationalistic tendencies in an increasingly divisive and divided world.
Learn more about CIMAM's 2021 Annual Conference: