Around infrastructures: artistic practices and climate change

Around infrastructures: artistic practices and climate change

Around infrastructures: artistic practices and climate change

Around infrastructures: artistic practices and climate change

ARTISTIC RESEARCH

GENERAL OBJECTIVE

Developing artistic practices that respond in a proactive way to the challenges posed by climate change for media infrastructural territories in Rio de Janeiro.

EXPECTED RESULTS

- Creating an exhibition on the topic, which will be titled "Senses of Connection"

- Publishing a book to share the creative process and its reflections

- Launching a website to share histories, narratives, imaginaries, a glossary, and reflections about the infrastructural territories.

PROJECT TIMELINE

Literature Review and Analysis: July 2023 to February 2024
Survey and Analysis of Artistic Practices: July 2023 to February 2024
Glossary Development: From November 2023 to February 2025
Field Visits to Infrastructural Territories: November 2024 to April 2024
Creative Processes and Artistic Practices in Territories: December 2023 to November 2024
Creation of a Website: April to November 2024
Offering Undergraduate Minicourse/Workshop: 2024
Postgraduate Course "Earth forces, infrastructures, and artistic practices": 2024
Presentation of Partial Results at Scientific Events: 2023/2024/2025
Exhibition: June 2025
Production and Publication of Artist's Book: January to June 2025
Writing the Final Report: July 2025

IDENTIFICATION OF INFRASTRUCTURAL TERRITORIES AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

MACUMBA BEACH

PAVUNA

SUMARÉ HILL

GUARATIBA

year_2060_return_level_10_rcp45_p95_contiguous_kopp_2017-1536x864.webp

MEDIA THEORY - RESEARCH TOPICS

- Communication and mediation strategies for climate action (Susan Doyle).

- Experiment of "art-based research" in Media/Communication studies

- The adaptation of data center and submarine cable industries to climate change and the "green transition" (Anne Pasek, Mél Hogan, Nicole Starosielski)

- The materiality and terrestriality of infrastructures (Jussi Parikka, Marcela Suárez Estrada, Sebastian Lehuadé).

- Recognition and generation of infrastructural affects (Lisa Parks) and resilience imaginaries (Luke Munn).

- Attention to the ideologies surrounding infrastructures in practice, beyond the imaginaries that envelop them (Niels ten Oever).

ARTISTIC RESEARCH TOPICS

- Art, perception of climate change, and infrastructural proprioception (challenges of scale).

- Projected expectations by science regarding art in relation to climate change.

- Critique of the spectacularization of climate change with the aesthetics of the sublime in contemporary art

- Transmedia fiction as a method for individual and collaborative creative processes in perceiving and imagining infrastructural territories.

- Fiction-based exhibition

- Art's ability to project possible variations of social reality and highlight limitations in the knowledge systems through which we make sense of the world.

DECEMBER/2023:

WORKSHOP

"EARTH FORCES, INFRASTRUCTURES AND ARTISTIC PRACTICES"

AT MACUMBA BEACH

The workshop involved the participation of artist-researchers (supervisor Walmeri Ribeiro and also Ananda Carvalho, Bárbara Lito, Fernanda Branco, João Eliel, Júlia Brasil) and a spontaneous local audience (Sávio).

Following breathing and meditation practices conducted by Walmeri Ribeiro and a discussion about the local history of the beach, which encompasses Afro-Brazilian ritual practices, the theme of submarine cables was addressed. The discussion delved into their history in Rio de Janeiro since 1873 and the current presence of fiber optic cables at Macumba Beach.

Subsequently, I invited participants to propose collective multisensory encounters with surfaces of submarine cable infrastructures - manholes and the submarine cable station building - and erosion control infrastructures (embodiment practices).

Additionally, efforts were made to create a buzz in the neighborhood about submarine cables and climate change by encouraging participants to engage in random conversations with locals on the topic (place-making practices).

Finally, participants were prompted to create a microfiction grounded in the experience of engaging with people, embodiment practices, and emplacement.

WhatsApp Image 2023-12-12 at 00.29.30(1).jpeg

WhatsApp Image 2023-12-12 at 00.29.30.jpeg

Multisensorial encounter with erosion control infrastructure proposed by Fernando Branco and Walmeri Ribeiro

Selected Quotes

"Art practices that instead [of the sublime aesthetics] overcome such classical and hierarchical paradigms hold the potential to open up different perceptions and perhaps even encourage action. They clarify the many ineluctable dissonances that we experience every day as we lead our CO2-intensive lives even while worrying about the climate crisis. Moving beyond the frame of individual consumer subjects, they can pave the way toward joint political actions outside of museums, where art and protest meet" (Schneider, 2021, p. 272)

"As such, an intentional message and explicit outcome should not be an expectation of arts engagement with climate change. Indeed, my own responses to art and climate change have been strongest when existing art works are reinterpreted through the lens of climate change (e.g. Gormley and Hatoum), or when art that may have been inspired by climate change is not instrumental or obvious in its message, instead seeking to make us question what it means to be human, and revealing the limitations of the knowledge systems through which we make sense of the world (e.g. Twomey) in the hope of generating new social realities. If climate change is not merely to provide ‘art with a new narrative’ (RSAArts and Ecology 2010), then collaborative projects between artists and different disciplines or groups of people may facilitate more meaningful and diverse cultural responses to climate change, moving images of climate change away from the obvious to help facilitate more meaningful, present and human centred responses to climate change." (Doyle, 2019, p. 156)

GLOSSARY (in progress)

REFERENCES

Au, Y. Data centres on the Moon and other tales: a volumetric and elemental analysis of the coloniality of digital infrastructures. Territory, Politics, Governance. 2022 Dec 15:1-9.

Boettger S. Ways of Saying: Rhetorical Strategies of Environmentalist Imaging. In The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change 2021 Feb 25 (pp. 252-262). Routledge.

Brodie P. Data infrastructure studies on an unequal planet. Big Data & Society. 2023 Jan;10(1):20539517231182402.

Bruno, Giuliana. Surface: Matters of aesthetics, materiality, and media. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Clare MA, Yeo IA, Bricheno L, Aksenov Y, Brown J, Haigh ID, Wahl T, Hunt J, Sams C, Chaytor J, Bett BJ. Climate change hotspots and implications for the global subsea telecommunications network. Earth-Science Reviews. 2022 Dec 26:104296.

Crosman, Luiza. Strategy and Spell. Passepartout, v. 22, n. 40, p. 29-52, 2020.

Demos TJ. The great transition: the arts and radical system change. E-flux Architecture. 2016.

Doyle J. Imaginative engagements: Critical reflections on visual arts and climate change. In Art, theory and practice in the Anthropocene 2019 Mar. Vernon Press. 2019

Dragona, Daphne. Charitos, D. Challenging Infrastructures. Alternative Networking & the Role of Art. (ed) Janez Jansa. Ljubljana: Aksioma. 2018.

Durairajan R, Barford C, Barford P. Lights out: Climate change risk to internet infrastructure. In Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop 2018 Jul 16 (pp. 9-15).

Easterling K. Extrastatecraft: The power of infrastructure space. Verso Books; 2014.

Estrada, Marcela Suárez & Lehuadé, Sebatian. Towards a Terrestrial Internet: re-imagining digital networks from the ground up, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 5:1, (2022)

Figueiredo, Ruy Cézar Campos. "A SUBMARINE CABLE ON THE ABOLITIONIST TIDE: MEDIA INFRASTRUCTURE AGAINST SLAVERY IN CEARÁ (1873-1888)." Revista de História (São Paulo) (2023): a02723.

Figueiredo, Ruy Cézar Campos. Estudos de infraestrutura e práticas artísticas: reconhecendo entrecruzamentos . Lumina, [S. l.], v. 16, n. 2, p. 5–22, 2022. DOI: 10.34019/1981-4070.2022.v16.34342. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/lumina/article/view/34342. Acesso em: 29 set. 2023.

Figueiredo, Ruy Cézar Campos. Pesquisa com práticas artísticas nos estudos de mídia e comunicação: situando questões epistemológicas. Galáxia (São Paulo, online), ISSN: 1982-2553. Publicação Contínua. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1982-2553202361068. v. 48, 2023, pp.1-22. Disponível em: https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/galaxia/article/view/61068/43151. Acesso em: 29 set. 2023.

Fischer-Lichte E. The transformative power of performance. Routledge; 2008.

Flusser, Vilém. Comunicologia: Reflexões sobre o futuro. Martins Fontes; 2015.

Gomes SP, Grouting G. Emergency recovery of Macumba Beach, Rio de Janeiro–RJ, using synthetic structure composed of tubular and flat textile bags.

Hardley B. Performance as Research: Guidelines. ADSA; 2013. Disponível em: http://www.adsa.edu.au/research/performanceasresearch. Acessado em janeiro de 2015.

Haseman B. A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy. 2006;theme issue "practice-led Research" (n. 118):98106.

Huhtamo E, Parikka J. Media archaeology: approaches, applications, and implications. University of California Press; 2011.

Hunter L, Riley SR. Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research. Palgrave Macmillan; 2009.

Hogan, Mel. “Environmental media” in the cloud: The making of critical data center art. Volume 25, Issue 2 p. 384–404. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221149

Kittler, F.riedrich A verdade do mundo técnico. Editora Contraponto; 2017.

Knebusch J. Art and climate (change) perception: Outline of a phenomenology of climate. Sustainability: a new frontier for the arts and cultures. 2008:242-62.

Larkin, Brian. Promising Forms: The Political Aesthetics of Infrastructure. In: The promise of infrastructure. Duke University Press; 2018. p. 175-202.

Larkin, Brian. The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual review of anthropology. 2013;42:327-343.

Manning E. Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty. Minnesota University Press; 2007.

Massumi B. Politics of Affect. Polity Press; 2015.

Mattern, Shannon. Scaffolding, Hard and Soft: Critical and Generative Infrastructures. In: The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities. Routledge; 2018. p. 318-326.

Mattern, Shannon. Scents of Spatial Order: Sensing Technical Lands In: Nesbit, Jeffrey. Waldheim, Charles [ed.]. Technical lands: a critical primer. 2022.

Munn L. Injecting failure: Data center infrastructures and the imaginaries of resilience. The Information Society. 2020 May 26;36(3):167-76.

Nishime L. Critical Approaches to the Climate Crisis. Social Media+ Society. 2023 Jun;9(2):20563051231177941.

Parikka J. Middle East and other futurisms: imaginary temporalities in contemporary art and visual culture. Culture, Theory and Critique. 2018;59(1):40-58.

Parikka, Jussi. Earth forces: Contemporary land arts, technology and new materialist aesthetics. Cultural Studies Review 21, no. 2 (2015): 47-75.

Parks L. Around the antenna tree: The politics of infrastructural visibility. In: ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 art gallery. 2007. p. 345.

Parks L, Starosielski N (ed). Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. University of Illinois Press; 2016.

Parks L. Media Infrastructures and Affect. Flow TV. 2014;19(12). Disponível em: http://flowtv.org/2014/05/media-infrastructures-and-affect/. Acessado em 13 de junho de 2018.

Parks, Lisa. Stuff You Can Kick: Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures. In Between Humanities and the Digital, edited by Patrik Svensson and David Theo Goldberg, 355–73. MIT Press, 2015.

Peters, John Durham. Infrastructuralism: Media as traffic between nature and culture. Traffic: Media as infrastructures and cultural practices. 2015. p. 31-49.

Pink, Sarah. Principles for sensory ethnography: perception, place, knowing, memory and imagination. in: Pink, Sarah. Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: SAGE Publications. 2009.

Quental Sion, Alice de San Tiago Dantas; FAVERO, Marcos. As Ruínas do Sumaré. Revista Prumo, [S.l.], v. 6, n. 09, p. 16, dec. 2021. ISSN 2446-7340. Disponível em: <http://periodicos.puc-rio.br/index.php/revistaprumo/article/view/1693>. Acesso em: 30 oct. 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24168/revistaprumo.v6i09.1693.

Rancière J. A partilha do sensível: estética e política. EXO experimental org.; Ed. 34; 2005.

Rossiter N. Software, infrastructure, labor: A media theory of logistical nightmares. Routledge; 2016.

Rossiter N. Eco-Aesthetics and the Politics of Mediation. Cultural Politics. 2018;14(2):275-80.

Rone J. The politics of data infrastructures contestation: Perspectives for future research. Journal of Environmental Media. 2022 Dec 1;3(2):207-14.

Santos, Milton. O lugar: encontrando o futuro / Razão global, razão local: os espaços da racionalidade. In: Da totalidade ao lugar. Edusp: São Paulo. 2002. p. 155-190.

Santos YS. A revitalização da Pavuna em um hub de transportes, cultura e sociabilidade. Trabalho Final de Graduação (Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo)– Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro. 2020.

Schneider B. Sublime Aesthetics in the Era of Climate Crisis?: A Critique. In: The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Routledge; 2021. p. 263-273.

Star, Susan Leigh. The ethnography of infrastructure. American behavioral scientist. 1999;43(3):377-391. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.

Shaw A, Sheppard S, Burch S, Flanders D, Wiek A, Carmichael J, Robinson J, Cohen S. Making local futures tangible—synthesizing, downscaling, and visualizing climate change scenarios for participatory capacity building. Global Environmental Change. 2009 Oct 1;19(4):447-63.

Sheppard SR. Visualizing climate change: a guide to visual communication of climate change and developing local solutions. Routledge; 2012 Mar 29.

Starosielski, Nicole. BOJCZUK, Iago. Southern Networks. E-flux Accumulation. 2023.

Starosielski N. Strangling the internet. Limn Issue 10: Chokepoints; 2018.

Starosielski N. The undersea network. Duke University Press; 2015.

Stengers I. No tempo das catástrofes. CosacNaify; 2015.

Taylor ARE. The Technoaesthetics of data centre "white space". Imaginations - Revue'D'ètudes Interculturelles de l'image. 2017;V. 8-2.

ten Oever, Niels. 5G and the notion of network ideology, or: The limitations of sociotechnical imaginaries. Telecommunications Policy. 2023 Jun 1;47(5):102442.

UNOPS. Infrastructures for climate action. 2021. Available at:

https://content.unops.org/publications/Infrastructure-for-climateaction_EN.pdf?mtime=20211008124956&focal=none.