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- Convenors:
-
Verena Winiwarter
(Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Julie Sze
Scott Braun
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- Chairs:
-
Anna Svensson
(Institution of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University)
Britta Fluevog (Transart Institute Liverpool John Moores University)
- Formats:
- Workshop
- Streams:
- Creativity, Sensibility, Experience, and Expression
- Location:
- Room 6
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 21 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This workshop provides an introduction to craft activism, embodied knowledge and artistic research. Participants will also create mourning accessories to move through their environmental destruction grief allowing them to better use the past to envision the future.
Long Abstract:
Human action has intervened into the biophysical world for millennia. Environmental historians have been particularly close observers of these processes, giving due respect to entanglements and complexities. Many have a close relation to nature as persons, some also as crafters or environmental activists. The workshops are a place to share craft(ivism) stories and by creating a piece of “jewelry of loss and compassion” to connect the global community.
Convenors open the workshop with short presentations of their own craft(ivism) experience.. Introducing “Knitting for Peace” (VW), “Botanical Memorials” (AS) and “Protest Textiles” (BF) The idea of embodied knowledge and objects as a method of knowledge carrying is presented. A Q& A session will lead into discussion of participants' experience in activism and in craft creation.
Participants are invited to bring small nature and/or personal items that will be used to create an accessory of loss. These pins and mourning jewelry can be worn throughout the conference, be disseminated virtually and travel the world to facilitate a larger conversation of environmental loss. This expression of loss will open up space for using the past to envision the future.
Requirements: tables for crafting; a non-lecture hall room; projector; wifi; cheap jewelry supplies of pin backs, earring hoops, barrette clips; and common crafting materials such as scissors, glue, paint and yarn. To be held on first day of sessions
Active participation limited to 25 persons.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Wednesday 21 August, 2024, -Contribution short abstract:
The presentation explores the uses of irony in environmental protests in Eastern Europe, and asks whether it is a strategy that could be discovered in environmental discourse and praxis more often.
Contribution long abstract:
In my take of the transition periods and the continuities of environmentalism in Eastern Europe, I will focus on the notion of irony in environmental protests. My case studies come from Estonian „singing revolution“ period of 1987-1991 and as a comparison, from Belarussian protests of 2020.
Timothy Morton in their discussion of environmentalism points out that the romantic idea of (national) environment is normally solemn, sublime, and organic. There is no hesitation, irony or ambivalence in such constructions. But, Morton asks, does such criticism need to be utterly sincere, or would it perhaps help if we brought and implemented the concept of romantic irony also to our ecocritical praxis - and, we could add, to our environmentalist activities in general?
Nicole Seymour in her book „Bad environmentalism“ takes a step further asks whether it is ok to make jokes about environmental issues. Direct confrontation is not always the most effective method for protest, especially under the conditions of a regime that is based on predominance in power.
Estonian researcher of journalism, Maarja Lõhmus has written that humor is the Achillean heel of a totalitarian regime. It more often than not evades censorship and can thus be used as a vechicle to „smuggle“ existentially critical problems to the public attention in the form that authorities have trouble banning.
In the presentation I will explore the uses of irony in Eastern European environmental protests and discuss its possible implementability elsewhere.
Contribution short abstract:
Flowers/plants have the power evoke lost places, moments and people. Bringing together archival examples and my creative practice (textiles and floristry), I will reflect over how this haptic engagement with plants has added understanding and agency in my response to environmental loss.
Contribution long abstract:
In my research as an historian of botanical collections, I have been struck by a consistency in the evocative power of flowers/plants to capture and recall places, moments and people. Flowers adorn rites of passage in both celebration and mourning. When collected and preserved, they become expressions of past times and places. They can encapsulate loss, whether personal memories and nostalgia for childhood or herbarium specimens from ecosystems long since urbanised.
Bringing together archival examples and my own creative practice (textiles and floristry), I will use this contribution to reflect over how this haptic engagement with plants has added depth and agency in response to environmental loss on both a personal and global level.
Contribution short abstract:
The environmental legacies of war are not included in the sustainable development goals. My crafting practice developed from my research on such legacies, as a means of peaceful, scholarly protest and for coming to terms with the effects of research on my psyche. Examples will be presented.
Contribution long abstract:
As an environmental historian, I work with the toxic legacies of humankind, mostly those stemming from weapons' production. Some are tamed for the moment, encased in concrete, and sealed against groundwater intrusion. Some are monsters, in the sense of being frightening, large, strange and hard, if not impossible to control. Their monstrosity is as much a social and economic as a technical and scientific one. Monsters such as Hanford (USA) or Pokhran (India) stem from war preparations. My work has led me to critique the SDGs (the Sustainable Development Goals), for not including in a meaningful way toxic legacies and the corruption happening in their clean-up. Starting from "Weaving the SDGs" (2021), I have become more of a peace activist than I ever imagined to be, seeking non-violent, scholarly forms of protest.
The knowledge I acquired through working with my hands, learning to produce tablet-woven bands, and now through knitting and crocheting for peace, has transformed the way I conceive of transformative learning. It has also helped me deal with the feeling of helplessness that comes with scholarly work on toxic legacies.
Contribution short abstract:
My research using textiles as a decentralized way of protesting will be introduced to participants. I will provide instructions on how to create a cardboard frame loom and weave a pin out of waste materials. I will also provide a method for them to mail the pins as an act of protest.
Contribution long abstract:
Within my research I am finding methods to decentralize art activism in order to increase access to protesting. I have proposed workshops as a potential method. If Possible, I would like to use part of this workshop within my ethics approved research study. I would introduce my research and the concept of using art as an act of protest and invite participants to learn to make a frame loom and weave a pin from refuse at my table. Those who wish may join my research study by providing written consent, being included in non-identifying images/ video (torso & hands only) and filling out questionnaires--those who wish to participate in the weaving but not the research are free to do so without any impediment whatsoever.