Performing the future: an artist-led project engaging with risk, uncertainty and environmental change

Abstract

This paper follows a practice-led methodology to explore how the diverse participants in the artist-led ‘Performing the Future’ project – including scientists working with climate models and over-60s groups in Liverpool and Cambridge – mediated their sense of risk and uncertainty in response to environmental change. We explore the nature of their participation and the different strategies used by the artists leading the project, describing the opportunities that emerged for more nuanced and complex visions of the realities of anthropogenic environmental change.

Keywords:

• Art
• risk
• climate change
• artistic methods
• co-production

Notes

1 http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf

2 https://www.nextnature.net/welcome/

3 http://www.andreapolli.com

4 https://grist.org/article/this-artist-is-using-technology-to-bring-nature-back-into-the-city

5 https://www.bese.com/fernando-palma-rodriguez-debuts-his-glitchy-animal-machine-hybrids-at-moma-ps1

6 http://ukclimateprojections.metoffice.gov.uk

7 https://phys.org/news/2017-10-three-quarters-total-insect-population-lost.html

8 https://www.songandpraise.org/jerusalem-hymn.htm

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts Council of England and grants from the EPSRC: From Human Data to Personal Experience (EP/M02315X/1) and EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in My Life in Data (EP/L015463/1).