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Taking into account histories of extraction, exhaustion and suffocation, and the accumulation of land and wealth by colonialism through the centuries, how can we imagine a new politics of cleaning, repairing and protecting in a climate changed world? – Françoise Vergès, 2021

IMMA TALKS presents a comprehensive two-day programme for EARTH RISING 2024, taking place across the IMMA campus featuring keynote talks, discussions and engaging conversations. This gathering serves as a platform for thought-provoking dialogue and exchange, bringing together leading thinkers, makers, and activists to explore ways to rebuild systems of sustainability, regeneration, and repair in a world transformed by climate change.

Delving into the themes of the exhibition Take a Breath, invited speakers will discuss some of the most urgent environmental, political and societal issues related to climate change and ongoing global struggles for social, gender, and racial justice. Topics such as climate justice, indigenous knowledge, radical ecologies, and the universal rights of the commons will be addressed. Esteemed international guests will examine the complex relationships between art, colonialism, and the environment, and propose alternative approaches to living more equitably with each other and the non-human world.

Over the course of weekend activities, a diverse set of practitioners share their insights on creating new forms of communities both globally and across the island of Ireland. They will highlight the importance of shared responsibility for our world-ecologies and argue for the decolonial transformation of our cultural and educational institutions. From land rights and health to food, migration and ancient relationships with forests, woodlands and the built environment – we invite you to listen to artists, designers, educators, critical thinkers and youth activists who advocate for intersectional strategies of solidarity, resistance, care, and protection, as vital for our future planetary survival.


Invited Speakers & Partners

Rolando Verquez (Professor of Post/Decolonial Theories and Literatures, the University of Amsterdam); Mick Wilson (Artist, Educator, and Researcher, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg); Françoise Vergès (Antiracist Feminist Activist, Co-founder of the Collective Decolonize the Arts); Sharae Deckard (Associate Professor, World Literature, UCD); Nadine El-Enany (Writer, Teacher, Poet, Professor of Law, University of Kent, UK); Ursula Biemann (Swiss Artist, Theorist, Forest Mind, 2022); BothAND Group (Research-based design studio); Sinéad Mercier (campaigner and Lecturer, Environmental Law, UCD); Donal Lally (Dublin-based Architect, Lecturer, Researcher, T UD); Glenn Loughran (TU Dublin MA Art and Environment); Gill Perry (Professor Art History, Open University, UK); Pippa Marland (Author of Ecocriticism and the Island: Readings from the British-Irish Archipelago, UK); Gareth Kennedy and Seoidín O’Sullivan (Field NCAD, Dublin); Dr. Fiona Whelan, John Conway (Artists The Forest Won’t Forget, 2024 ); Sarah Searson (National Sculpture Factory, Cork); Sahar Qawasmi (Sakiya Residency – Palestine); Diarmuid Torney (DCU: Centre for Climate & Society); Evie Kenny (host of RTE’s Ecolution podcast); Islander Architects (Laura Carroll & Ciarán Molumby); Susannah Hagan (Author of Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene, 2022, Professor University of Westminster, London) and many others.

Invited Convenors & Partners
TU Dublin: MA Art and Environment, DCU Centre for Climate & Society, Demolition Take Over, Digital Radio (ddr), NCAD – The Field, Dublin & L’Internationale-Museum of the Commons; and with the support of Taighde Éireann | Research Ireland. Collaborative partners unite their communities of researchers, practitioners, and international guests to discuss some of the most urgent issues at the intersections of art, education, design, ecology, and climate justice.


Talks Schedule Sat 21 & Sun 22 Sept

The Talks Suite, North Wing, IMMA

SATURDAY 21 SEPTMBER 2024

9.45 – 11am
Welcome Address: Annie Fletcher, Director, IMMA.
Recalling Earth, Overcoming the Contemporary
Speaker: Rolando Vázquez. Moderator: Mick Wilson.

11am – 12noon – Keynote Talk
Breathing: A Revolutionary Act and A Call for Solidarity & Freedom
Speaker: Françoise Vergès. Moderator: Dr Sharae Deckard.

12noon – 1pm
Race Law and the Air We Breathe
Speaker: Nadine El-Enany. Moderator: Sinead Mercier.

2 – 3pm
Lecture: Forest as a Field of Mind
Speaker: Ursula Biemann. Moderator: Mick Wilson.

3 – 4pm
Talks and Discussion: Designing with Living Systems
Speaker: BothAnd Group. Respondent: Sinead Mercier. Moderator: Donal Lally.

4 – 6.30pm
Discussion & Gathering: What is an Island?
Patchwork Pedagogies for a World Archipelago.
TU Dublin MA Art and Environment convened & moderated by Dr Glenn Loughran, Ann Davoren with Guests Gill Perry, Pippa Marland, Émer Deane, Ruairí Ó Donnabháin.
Book Launch and Reception follows the discussion.

SUNDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 2024

10.30am – 12noon
Panel Discussion: Reflections on a Living Public Artwork
Panellists: The Forest That Won’t Forget, 2024 with artists John Conway and Fiona Whelan; Ray Ó Foghlú of Hometree; Ceara Martyn of 221+. Moderator: Sarah Searson. Welcome refresshments from 10.30am

CANCELLED 12noon – 1pm
Pedagogies of the Commons: Sakiya Residency – Palestine
Speaker: Sahar Qawasmi. Moderator: Mary Cremin.
This talk has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

2 – 3.30pm
On Climate Justice, Hope & Imagination – DCU’s Centre for Climate and Society Perspectives on Climate Justice, Hope & Imagination 
Panellists: Dr. Louise Fitzgerald, Dr Ben Mallon, Dr. Ellen Howley, Laura Costello. Moderator: Dr. Diarmuid Torney.

3.30 – 5pm
Responses on Demolition Takedown installation at IMMA
Panellists: Susannah Hagan, Ellen McKinney, Joseph Kilroy Dr Carole Pollard. Moderator: Emer Byrne.

OTHER TALKS & ACTIVITIES

FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2024

6 – 9pm / IMMA Courtyard
Music & Performance: ddr Live Radio Show – Sonic Ecologies with ddr & guests – Ian Nyquist and Ádhamh.

SATURDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2024

11.30am – 12.30pm / Formal Gardens – House 
Field Walk & Talk: What Is an Island? 
with Dr Glenn Loughran, TU Dublin MA Art and Environment.

1 – 2pm / Gallery 1 meet at Main Reception 
In Gallery Talk: Take a Breath
An informal walk-through of the IMMA exhibition, Visitor and Engagement Team member Aidan O’ Sullivan.

2 – 3pm / Lecture Room
Youth Panel Discussion:
Giving Voice to Children & Young People on the climate ecological crisis. Moderator: Evie Kenny, of RTE’s Ecolution podcast.

3.30 – 4.30pm / Formal Garden Terrace
Field Walk & Talk – Convivial Tools: Scythe-time
Moderated by artists Gareth Kennedy and Seoidín O’Sullivan of NCAD FIELD & joined by members of Tranzit and The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life (Romania).

SUNDAY 22 SEPTMEBR 2024

1 – 2pm / Gallery 1 meet at Main Reception 
In Gallery Talk: Take a Breath
An informal walk-through of the IMMA exhibition with Visitor and Engagement Team member Olive Barrett.

5 – 7pm / IMMA Courtyard
Music & Performance: ddr Live Radio Show – Sonic Ecologies with ddr & guests – Elaine Howley and geis

 


EARTH RISING: Discussion Points

Talks in this series caters for environmental activists, scholars, artists, students, and academics as well as general public interests in art, environment, and social justice. Join the conversation, as we explore the following points of enquiry.

• How can we transform the right to breathe into a global movement that humanizes our world and transcends borders?
• In what ways are artists, designers, educators, and researchers joining forces to combat ecological instability?
• What pivotal roles can art, science, indigenous wisdom, and policy play in forging new models for coexisting in a shared world?
• How can the ‘living’ museum become a vibrant hub for fostering and nurturing concrete practices of resistance, sustainability, and repair across art, culture, society and the natural world?
• Amidst growing alienation from nature, how do we reclaim and revive systems of connection, healing, regeneration, and repair in our contemporary world?


Biographies

Saturday 21 September 2024: 9.40 – 5.30pm

Rolando Vázquez is a teacher and decolonial thinker. Rolando is Professor of Post/Decolonial Theories and Literatures, with a focus on the Global South” at the department of Literary and Cultural Analysis & the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). He is regularly invited to deliver keynotes on decoloniality at academic and cultural institutions. Since 2010, he co-directs with Walter Mignolo the annual Maria Lugones Decolonial Summer School, now hosted by the Van Abbemuseum. Vázquez’s work places the question of the possibility of an ethical life at the core of decolonial thought and advocates for the decolonial transformation of cultural and educational institutions. Most recent publication includes “Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary” (Mondriaan Fund 2020). More details here

Françoise Vergès is an antiracist feminist activist, a public educator, an independent curator, and the cofounder of the collective Decolonize the Arts 52015-2020). She is the author of seminal publications: A Decolonial Feminism (Pluto, 2021); The Wombs of Women: Race, Capital, Feminism (Duke University Press, 2020) and forthcoming A Program of Absolute Disorder. Decolonizing the Museum (Pluto, 2024). Françoise Vergès is currently Senior Fellow Researcher, Sarah Parker Remont Center for the Study of Race and Racialization, UCL, London. See more details here. Françoise Vergès is a key research contributor to L’Internationale and the fourth cooperative project Museum of the Commons, of which IMMA is associate member see more details here

Nadine El-Enany is a writer, poet and teacher. She is Professor of Law at the University of Kent. Her book (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2020) was awarded the 2021 SLSA Theory and History Book Prize. El-Enany is co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto Press, 2021), and co-editor of After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response (Pluto Press, 2019). She is winner of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. She has written for the Guardian, LRB Blog, Verso Blog, New Humanist, MAP Magazine, Open Democracy and Critical Legal Thinking. More details here

Ursula Biemann is a Swiss artist and theorist, her practice centres on fieldwork, often in Indigenous territories, and the creation of networks between different fields of knowledge. Her artistic practice reflects on the political ecologies of forests, oil and water, creating through her videos, books and installations critical perspectives on the dynamics of extraction and also proposing alternative, ecocentric modes of ecological and epistemological relatedness. Recent Solo exhibitions present at MAMAC in Nice and at MUAC, the Museum for Contemporary Art in Mexico City. She published the online monograph “Becoming Earth” on ten years of her ecological video works and writing and the book “Forest Mind – On the Interconnection of All Life” with Spector Books. More details here

BothAnd Group is a research-based design studio investigating the logic of living systems, and the social, ecological and political forces that shape urban and rural territories. They uncover, design for, and translate these concerns through their work in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and exhibition. BothAnd Group’s work has been exhibited at both La Biennale Architettura 2023 and the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022. Their ongoing investigations include an examination of global food landscapes and indigenous land management practices. BothAnd Group is Jarek Adamczuk, Alice Clarke, Andrew Ó Murchú and Kate Rushe. More details here

Moderator: Mick Wilson, is artist, educator and researcher based in Gothenburg and Dublin. He is currently Professor of Art, Director of Doctoral Studies at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, and co-chair of the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary. More details here

Moderator: Dr. Sharae Deckard is Associate Professor in World Literature in the School of English at UCD. Sharae has published five books, most recent is Tracking Capital: World-Systems, World-Ecology, World-Culture, co-authored with Michael Niblett and Stephen Shapiro (SUNY Press 2024). More details here

Moderator & Respondent: Sinéad Mercier is campaigner and Lecturer in environmental law and PhD candidate in environmental, cultural heritage and climate law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin. Aiming to make climate and environmental issues as relevant and accessible as possible to the public in keeping with a meitheal, internationalist and social justice approach. She is a militant optimist has been involved in various campaigns. See more details here

Moderator: Donal Lally is a Dublin-based architect, lecturer, and researcher. His research critically explores the socio-technical imaginaries of data infrastructure, focusing on data materiality, techno-utopianism, and techno-colonialism. Donal has presented his work at institutions, festivals and universities around the world, such as at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Transmediale, University of Illinois, Akademie Der Kuenste (Berlin), Science Gallery Dublin, Universität der Künste (Berlin), the Galway International Arts Festival, amongst many others. More details here

TU DUBLIN MA Art and Environment Convenor & Moderator: Glenn Loughran (TU Dublin MA Art and Environment) and chaired with Ann Davoren (Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre). Together they have delivered the long-standing BA in Visual Art on Sherkin Island and the archipelagic MA Art and Environment, sited on multiple islands. In 2020, he set up the archipelagic MA Art and Environment in collaboration with Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. The MA Art and Environment (MAAE) uniquely combines post-studio art practice, interdisciplinary research, virtual teaching, island studies and community engagement. More details here

Panellist: Gill Perry, Professor of Art History at the Open University, UK. Her books include Islands and Contemporary Art Hardcover – 1 Sept. 2024. More details here

Panellist: Pippa Marland Lecturer in English and Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol, and author of Ecocriticism and the Island: Readings from the British-Irish Archipelago (Rowman and Littlefield 2023) and the forthcoming The Pen and the Plough: The Farm in British Nature Writing. More details here

Panellist: Émer Deane, Asst Sec British and Northern Ireland Affairs Division, The British and Northern Ireland Affairs Division comprises two units, which work together to support the Taoiseach and the Government in fostering reconciliation and developing relationships on the island of Ireland and between Britain and Ireland. More details here

Panellist: Ruairí Ó Donnabháin, is a language activist and a choreographer, graduate from the MA Art and Environment (TU Dublin). His choreographic practice is concerned with ‘aesthetic practices of care’. He is currently living and working on Oileán Chléire, where he has recently set up an arts festival and residency. More details here

IMMA / NCAD FIELD / tranzit / L’Internationale Associate partners of L’Internationale Museum of the Commons Climate. More details here Moderators: Gareth Kennedy and Seoidín O’Sullivan of NCAD FIELD was established in 2020 to facilitate face-to-face learning during the pandemic and introduce critical ecological thought and action into art and design students’ learning experience, and to create a hospitable setting for art and design research to meet other forms of expertise in novel ecosystems. More details here tranzit / The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life (Romania) The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life is a project, a site and the expression of a utopia. It is a bet and a promise, an experiment and an investment into a future we can still shape. The Station is the result of the shared desires and beliefs of a small community built over years, around values such as love of art, respect for nature, friendship, belief in emancipatory practices, sharing of resources, mutual trust. More details here

Sunday 22 September 2024: 10:30 – 5pm

THE FOREST THAT WON’T FORGET
Panellist: Dr. Fiona Whelan is a Dublin based artist, writer and educator, who is committed to exploring and responding to systemic power relations and inequalities through long-term cross-sectoral collaborations with diverse individuals, groups and organisations. Fiona Whelan is Programme Leader of the MA/MFA Art and Social Action at NCAD. More details here

Panellist: John Conway is a visual artist working extensively in complex healthcare and community health contexts. Previous projects include long term collaborations with breast cancer survivors, mothers of children in end-of-life care, paediatric healthcare staff, and family members of forensic mental healthcare patients. More details here

Panellist: Ray Ó Foghlú is a woodland conservationist. His background is in Environmental Science, where he specialised in Forests and Water Quality. He has worked for the last decade in the Irish eNGO sector. He is currently the Landowner Engagement Coordinator at Hometree Charity. www.hometree.ie

Panellist: Ceara Martyn 221+ (Patient Support Group for those directly affected by the CervicalCheck debacle). More details here

Moderator: Sarah Searson director of the National Sculpture Factory Cork, and previous Director of The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon where she commissioned several artists projects related to contemporary forestry practices in Northwest of Ireland.

SAKIYA RESIDENCY – Palestine Sahar Qawasmi Cofounder and Director Sakiya, an international residency programme and research platform in Ramallah, Palestine. Sahar Qawasmi is an architect, restorer, cultural organizer, and forager, committed to the conservation of land, restoration of architectural heritage, and preservation of Palestine’s cultural histories as testaments of creative collective resilience. More details here

DCU CENTRE FOR CLIMATE AND SOCIETY Moderator & Convenor: Diarmuid Torney, Associate professor in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University and is director of the DCU Centre for Climate and Society and programme chair of DCU’s MSc in Climate Change: Policy, Media and Society. He is author of European Climate Leadership in Question: Policies toward China and India (MIT Press, 2015) and co-editor of Ireland and the Climate Crisis (Palgrave, 2020) and European Union External Environmental Policy: Rules, Regulation and Governance Beyond Borders (Palgrave, 2018). More details here

Panellist: Ben Mallon is Assistant Professor in Geography and Citizenship Education in the School of STEM Education, Innovation & Global Studies in the Institute of Education, Dublin City University.

Panellist: Dr. Ellen Howley is an Assistant Professor in the School of English. She received her PhD in 2020, for a thesis that examined engagements with the sea in Irish and Caribbean poetry. In 2019, she co-organised the IRC-funded, interdisciplinary workshop Planet Ocean.

Panellist: Dr. Louise Fitzgerald Assistant Professor at the DCU School of Law and Government. Louise’s research broadly focuses on issues of justice in environmental topics and is leading a SEAI-funded project on the role of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in energy transformations.

Panellist: Laura Costello, Strategy Director Purpose & Planet at THINKHOUSE has been named by Forbes Magazine as one of 43 People Changing Advertising for the Climate. More details here

Moderator: Evie Kenny, Host of RTE’s Ecolution podcast, with participants in Ireland’s Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. More details here

DEMOLITON TAKE DOWN Convenors: Islander architects is a Dublin based design and research practice led by two registered members of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), Laura Carroll & Ciarán Molumby. Demolition Take Down is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action Fund and is a research and engagement initiative by Islander Architects. As a practice they aim to be agents of change, they believe in the broader social impact architecture and the built environment can have on our communities & places. Laura & Ciarán currently teach at the School of Architecture, Building and Environment, TU Dublin. More details here

Panellist: Susannah Hagan is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster, London. She has published extensively, drawing together architectural design, history and theory to examine environmental practice in publications such as Digitalia (2008), and Ecological Urbanism (2015) and acclaimed book, Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene, 2022. More details here Panellist: Ellen McKinney is sustainability manager at IPUT.
Panellist: Joseph Kilroy is (IE) of the CIOB.

Panellist: Dr Carole Pollard architect & architectural historian.

Moderator: Emer Byrne is from the School of Surveying and Construction Innovation, TU Dublin.


Booking & Further Information

No Booking Required – Drop In & Accessible to All
Drop in and join the conversation! Seats are limited and allocated on a first-come basis. Full listings are available on the EARTH RISING downloadable app. You download the app on the App Store here and on Google Play here

For further information on IMMA TALKS Earth Rising, contact Sophie Byrne, IMMA Talks & Public Programmes, Email: [email protected]