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Radio Disaster

The Climate Change Series

Mudam announces a year-long series of keynote lectures and screenings by cultural producers, thinkers and scientists devoted to the subject of climate change. Entitled Radio Disaster: The Climate Change Series the programme is an homage to philosopher Walter Benjamin’s (b.1892, Berlin; d. 1940, Portbou) radio broadcast for children (1929–32) which was devoted to catastrophes around the world such as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The series is an attempt to develop a deeper discourse on climate change as a catastrophic and irreversible change for our planet.

In 1873 geologist Antonio Stoppani (b. 1824, Lecco; d. 1891, Milan) introduced the term ‘Anthropozoic Era’ to define a geological period in which human activities were able to influence the atmosphere and alter its balance. The meteorologist Paul Jozef Crutzen (b. 1933, Amsterdam; d. 2021, Mainz) coined the term ‘Anthropocene’ in 2000.

Radio Disaster: The Climate Change Series follows a progressive structure: from a macroscopic and sociological perspective to a technological and microscopic view. Starting with the theme of the Anthropocene, the opening lecture by Suzanne Dhaliwal will provide a global overview of our geopolitical condition. The programme then moves on to consider the vastness of oceans and the dramatic decline of marine ecosystems with a lecture by Chus Martínez.

A series of film screenings are included alongside the lectures, including a documentary about feminist scholar, Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival (2017) by Fabrizio Terranova, Alpi (2011) by artist Armin Linke and Sea Lovers (2019) a film by artist Ingo Niermann.

Radio Disaster: The Climate Change Series seeks to suggest ways to engage with a common crisis, looking for alternative ways of living.

Curator: Joel Valabrega

Screening + Lecture
20.11.2021 | 16h00 | EN
Fee: 10€ | 5
for students

Booking Mudam Auditorium

Online Live Stream

Natália Trejbalová: About Mirages and Stolen Stones
Screening
“The initial idea for the film About Mirages and Stolen Stones… arose from my interest in speculative narrations and popular conspiracy theories, in particular, ‘The Flat Earth Theory’. Despite the possibility to access extremely effective visualization tools, such as Google Earth, now available to a growing number of people, the belief that the Earth is flat has returned, finding many new followers. I believe that the renewed success of this speculation denotes the spread of an extreme relativism regarding the reliability of explanatory models that concerns the functioning of the world. Meanwhile, the hierarchies of knowledge, including the social distinction between experts and non-experts, appear increasingly blurred.” - Natàlia Trejbalovà

Thomas Moynihan: X-Risk. How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction
Lecture
From forecasts of disastrous climate change to AI superintelligences, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the 21st century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history.

Lectures

Suzanne Dhaliwal – Decolonising Climate Justice
08.05.2021 | 16h00 | EN | Via Zoom
Mudam Auditorium: 8€ | Online: Free

Environmental justice, economic justice, racial justice and gender justice are indivisible parts of a global struggle to readdress existing power structures. Active movements must ensure that these matters are embedded in the agenda of the transition away from the fossil fuel economy by addressing the root causes of capitalism and colonialism.

Chus Martínez – The Current
09.06.2021 | 17h00 | EN
Mudam Auditorium: 8€
Is the Ocean an art space? With this question in mind, curator and researcher Chus Martínez has explored different concerns with the state of the ocean and the discourse around it. Through the three-year programme The Current she has engaged with the most pressing issues related to oceans and explored contemporary solutions in relation to art.

Screenings

Sea Lovers (2020) by Ingo Niermann
09.06.2021 | 18h00 (following the lecture by Chuz Martínez)
Mudam Auditorium: Free
Large parts of the sea are used in a similar fashion to the countryside. Still, its liquidity and enormous size sustain substantial differences. The oceans slip away from national and personal liability. The video Sea Lovers portrays a group of people who aspire to a more intimate relation with the ocean.

Alpi (2011) by Armin Linke
18.07.2021 | 16h00
Mudam Auditorium: 8€

Alpi is the result of seven years of research on contemporary perspectives of the landscape of the Alpine region, juxtaposing places and situations across all eight bordering nations where four different languages are spoken. In the film, the Alps are encountered like an island that is connected to various global transformations.

Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival by Fabrizio Terranova
23.10.2021 | 16h00
Mudam Auditorium: 8€
This documentary features feminist scholar Donna Haraway (b. 1944, Denver) in a playful and engaging exploration of her life, influences and ideas. Haraway is a passionate and discursive storyteller and the film is structured around a series of discussions on subjects including capitalism and the Anthropocene.

Credits

Location:
Mudam Auditorium