Art of climate activism — Talk by Emma Arnold at international conference V COMbART
V COMbART: Art, Activism and Citizenship
3 to 5 July 2024
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto
Porto, Portugal
International conference V COMbART: Art, Activism and Citizenship
Revolutions, Protests and Aesthetic-Political Activism
About the talk by Emma Arnold
Art and activism are important ways through which we culturally make sense of the climate crisis. Blending artistic expression with civil disobedience, artistic activism (“artivism”) is increasingly being used by citizens to creatively disrupt and protest, express strong emotions, raise public awareness, and inspire meaningful political action on the climate crisis. Researchers are also being pulled into artistic activism as they look for new ways to study social movements and their transformational power. Doing artistic-activist (“artivist”) research can be challenging, but also holds many opportunities for deepening knowledge, amplifying marginalised voices, encouraging freedom of expression, and brining hope into a topic that can feel overwhelmingly bleak. Sharing images and personal experiences from working as an artist photographing climate activism, this presentation reflects on the challenges and opportunities of artivist research on the climate crisis and suggests that taking artistic-activist approaches can be transformative in many ways.
About the conference
The international conference COMbART is a forum for discussion around engaged creative and artistic practices. We understand that art, culture, as well as a set of other creative practices not included in these categories, can constitute expressive fields with a relevant role in the way citizenship is built in contemporary times.
The focus of the fifth international conference COMbART focuses on the intersection of three thematic and analytical dimensions: revolutions, protests and artivisms, recovering the notion of aesthetic-political activism.
The fifth international COMbART conference is a collaboration between different entities. The organisation involves the Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto (IS-UP), the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences (CICS. NOVA), the Transdisciplinary Research Centre «Culture, Space and Memory» (CITCEM) and LabEA - Laboratory for Research in Art Education / FBAUP. Also partners of this event are the Luso-Brazilian All the Arts Network (TAA) and the Luso-Brazilian Research Network in Arts and Urban Interventions (RAIU).
COMbART brings together a diverse set of knowledge, disciplines and arts, opening the submission of proposals to researchers from areas such as sociology, anthropology, history, art history, cultural and creative industries, cultural economy, cultural and social geography, urban planning, cultural studies, communication sciences and related disciplines. such as illustration, music, performance, film, visual and performing arts and new technologies.
For more information about this event, please refer to the official conference website. Please note that the conference description was adapted from text written by the organisers of the COMbART conference. The description of the talk is written by Emma Arnold.
