A talk given with Paulo Tavares on Nov. 20, 2015 as part of the Bétonsalon Centre d'art et de recherche Dark Series programming.
Retracing Debacle: From North to South and Back Again
“As part of the public programme Dark Series unfolding during the exhibition Co-Workers: Beyond Disaster, this conversation between architect Paulo Tavares and urbanist Justine Liv Olausson will bring together different perspectives on global warming, here questioned as a consequence of the industrial and imperialist culture of Northern countries, that first affects the countries of the Global South. Broaching the political violence which underlines this matter, Paulo Tavares and Justine Liv Olausson will elaborate on the effects generated both in some urban and non-urban areas of Global South. The talk will pivot around how global warming crisis affects the development of the communities and the possible ways for them to adapt and deal with this situation.”
About Dark Series
“The exhibition Co-Workers: Beyond Disaster takes the perspective of a common work as a way to re-think our ways to build and inhabit our environment. The exhibition gathers a few stories that embody different ways of reacting to the troubled situation we are living in, and proposes alternative modalities to relate with the world.
The show considers disaster as a juncture where a new sense of collectivity arises against tragedy. A time of upheaval. Following this notion, the Dark Series – its public programme - embody a transitional moment where to envisage substitutes, choices, loopholes, opportunities and dilemmas related to the climate change crisis. The Dark Series intends to look at not only environmental aspects but also economical, social and political implications of this problem, in order to create a transdisciplinary platform that can encapsulate its manifold resonances.
The programme is rooted in a terrain where it is possible to imagine a geography, a climate, a novel ecology, and think of new futures by comprehending the issues that affect our present. The Dark Series unravels in multiple shapes and in different timespans by means of narrative techniques, artistic research, science-fiction, talks, and assemblies.”
Curated by Barbara Cueto & Garance Malivel
About Co-Workers: Beyond Disaster
October 8, 2015 – January 30, 2016
“Flows of information, words, data, immaterial transactions, rain, tidal waves. Anxious observation of a deregulated forecast. Is it capital or the weather that determines the course of things today? Illegibility, contradictory predictions, broken logics.
Co-Workers: Beyond Disaster puts forth the speculative powers of story-telling and science-fiction to re-think the ways we inhabit our environment. As a counterpoint to the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris in 2017, the project addresses from a transversal perspective the relationship we build with the world surrounding us, in order to explore possible transformations and collective forms of action.”
Initiated by Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Co-Workers unfolds over two different chapters: The Network as Artist at MAMVP and Beyond Disaster at Bétonsalon — Centre for Art and Research, where a program of events and encounters will punctuate the exhibition.
Co-Workers : Beyond Disaster was supported by the Région Île-de-France, Arcadi Île-de-France in the frame of Némo, Biennale internationale des arts numériques — Paris / Île-de-France, as well as by Fondation Imago Mundi (Cracow) within the programme Place Called Space (project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Małopolska Regional Operational Programme for 2007-2013).