The Climate Imagination Reader is a collection of texts from xtro realm's 2021 OFF-Biennale project ACLIM!, available at in ENGLISH at mezosfera ISSUE #9 and in HUNGARIAN at tranzitblog.hu
The authors of the article series are young PhD researchers and thinkers, who are working on aspects of the climate crisis in their own fields of science, both abroad and in Hungary. In this sense, the block can be seen as a kind of generational networking enterprise, covering the following topics:
I. Anna Zilahi In the foreword to the series, she introduces the concept of contingency and reflects on how we can use the realisation of our dependence on our environment and the experience of unpredictability in the context of the coronavirus in our responses to the climate crisis. What might the imagination be like that can lift us out of our paralysis in the face of the climate crisis?
II. A The editors of Fordulat discuss why the Covid Crisis is not a product of nature but of growth-oriented economic logic, and what room for manoeuvre we have to ensure that crisis management does not preserve the same capitalist system.
III. Héla Hecker (Humboldt/DFG/New School) uses Hannah Arendt's political philosophy to show how our treatment of nature is determined by the causal, outcome-oriented structure of our actions.
IV. John Szabó (CEU) looks at Hungary's energy picture, dominated by two great powers, the Soviet Union (Russia after its break-up) and the European Union. The former has been instrumental in the development of a nuclear, natural gas and oil-based society, while the latter is shaping Hungary's energy future in the context of the energy transition.
V. Dóra Kiss Kata (PTE) will present the ecofeminist idea that there is a close connection between the way our culture treats femininity and nature. She does this through the dominant political discourse that affects women, including in Hungary.
VI. Rita Süveges (MKE) uses the methodology of ecocriticism to analyse the dominant cultural topos in the construction of landscape and how these shape society's relationship to nature.
VII. Patrícia Gál Réka (University of Toronto) presents a feminist critique of the rhetoric of escape from space colonization, which she develops along the notion of care, and also discusses the extent to which the recovery from the crisis situation brought about by the current COVID-19 depends on the continuity of reproductive work.
VIII. Through an analysis of international contemporary art practices, Eszter Erdősi (University of Edinburgh) examines the means by which ecocritical art moves beyond the mere aestheticisation of the ecological crisis towards a critical view of capitalism in the climate crisis.
IX. Eszter Őze (ELTE) analyses the representation of public hygiene and epidemics. She shows, mainly through the example of 20th century health exhibitions and collections, how public hygiene and the medicalization of the population became a political tool for the current power. In the context of the current epidemiological situation, he is interested in how the plans and policies of health care can be read as a cultural representation of power, and what the prehistories of this are.
X. Márk Losoncz (University of Belgrade) annotates our series-closing text, which takes us on a thought pilgrimage through social imagination, ideologies, secret services, conspiracy theories, the deep state and ecological imagination.
The Climate Imagination Reader is a series of articles on ecological topics edited by Rita Süveges and Anna Zilahi, members of the xtro realm artist group, and the editor of the images in the block is Gideon Horváth.
2020.08.26. 18-20:00
Glassyard Gallery
The Unstable State of Tings
"The question is whether we are capable of an imagination that takes into account man's actual place in the world, keeps in mind that nature cannot be separated from society, and is ready to do the hardest thing: to break with the productivist, endlessly invasive paradigm, to force society to self-limit." (Mark Losoncz)
The xtro realm Climate Imagination Reader is a collection of ten texts whose main objective is to promote a response to the ecological and climate crisis. Through the writings of our own and invited authors, we have sought to explore the determinants of contemporary thinking that can bring us closer to unleashing the social imagination and thus lead to more inclusive, sustainable and equitable visions of the future. Launched in spring 2020, the eco-article series was published on tranzitblog.hu in two weekly installments.
In the framework of the Risk Change programme, the writings published in the collection will be featured twice in conjunction with the Glassyard Gallery exhibition. At the Climate Imagination pop-up zoom symposium on Wednesday 26 August 2020 at 18.00, Héla Hecker, Márk Losoncz and John Szabo will present their views, followed by a one-hour roundtable discussion moderated by Rita Süveges and Anna Zilahi, editors of the Reader. The discussion will then be opened to questions and comments from the audience.
Héla Hecker, in her essay The Politics of Touchability, will explore, through the philosophy of Hanna Arendt, how freedom and the possibility of connection are lost in the domination of the world, and what is the Arendtian "action" through which one's relationship with the environment can be renewed.
Márk Losoncz's Long March through the Social Imagination is a thought pilgrimage through the social imagination, ideologies, secret services, conspiracy theories, the deep state and the ecological imagination.
In his analysis of Between Two Giants: materialism and social imagination in the Hungarian energy (transition), Szabo John seeks to answer the question of how Hungary's energy mix became wedged between the Soviet Union and the EU. Does decarbonisation count against capitalism? Can a more democratic energy vision be expected from the introduction of renewables?
Wednesday 26 August
18.00 - 20:00
ZOOM-link: (coming soon)
Due to the epidemiological situation, not all participants can be present, we have chosen the option of a zoom-conference without audience.
The authors participating in the Climate Imagination pop-up symposium:
Héla Hecker is a researcher at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin and the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, and was previously a member of the research group "Selbst-Bildungen. Praktiken der Subjektivierung in historischer und interdisziplinärer Perspektive". He was a visiting researcher in the Department of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York and a research fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry. In his dissertation he examined the relationship between emotions and politics in Hannah Arendt's political philosophy.
Márk Losoncz defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Novi Sad. Part of his doctoral research was carried out at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris, followed by postdoctoral research at the Department of Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He is a fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory (University of Belgrade). He is (co-)author and (co-)editor of eight books. His writings have been published in English, French, German, Serbian/Croatian, Slovenian and Hungarian.
John Szabo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the Central European University (CEU) and a Research Associate at the Institute for World Economics of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies. Her dissertation examines changes in the EU natural gas market in the light of the European Commission's climate policy. Her interest focuses on the role of energy in social systems.
"According to the Western myth of modernity, in order for culture, art, science and political life to flourish, it was first necessary to transcend certain 'natural' necessities (such as our exposure to the forces of nature, to epidemics and disease, to food and water shortages). To the extent that man can control them, he can control them, and to the extent that he can control them, he can use them."
(Kiss Kata)
Launched in spring 2020, the xtro realm 2020 Climate Imagination Reader is a collection of ten texts with the main objective of promoting a response to the ecological and climate crisis. Through the writings of our own and invited authors, we have sought to explore the determinants of contemporary thinking that can bring us closer to unleashing the social imagination and thus lead to more inclusive, sustainable and equitable visions of the future. Launched in spring 2020, the eco-article series was published on tranzitblog.hu in two weekly installments.
In the framework of the Risk Change programme, the writings published in the collection will be featured twice in conjunction with the Glassyard Gallery exhibition. On Sunday, 30 August 2020, at 11.00 a.m., the Climate Imagination Marathon Reading Circle will be held, led by Kata Kiss, Eszter Őze and Zoltán Sidó (Fordulat), where they will read and discuss three texts published in the Climate Imagination Reader.
Sunday, 30 August
11.00 - 16:00
Margaret Island (exact location to be confirmed)
In case of bad weather the event will be held at the Glassyard Gallery
11.00 - 12.30
In their article "Coronavirus and capitalism: profit or solidarity?", the editors of the journal "Turning Point" (Zoltán Sidó) write about the destructive workings of capitalism and the social solidarity that flares up in times of crisis, and the practices that are necessary to ensure the common good and human well-being.
12.30 - 13.00 Lunch break of half an hour: please bring your own reading material! :)
13.00 - 14.30
Dóra Kiss Kata Back to nature? In her article "A Feminist Reading of the Ecological Crisis", she examines the connections between patriarchal oppression, capitalist exploitation and the ecological and climate crisis from an ecofeminist perspective, paying special attention to official domestic practices and measures in this direction.
14.30 - 16.00
Eszter Őze will dissect the biopolitical promise of predictability: how does the body of all of us become the biopolitical backdrop of the capitalist production system responsible for the climate crisis?
Climate Imaginary is a marathon reading by our lead authors:
12.30 - 13.00 Lunch break of half an hour: please bring your own reading material! :)
13.00 - 14.30
Dóra Kiss Kata Back to nature? In her article "A Feminist Reading of the Ecological Crisis", she examines the connections between patriarchal oppression, capitalist exploitation and the ecological and climate crisis from an ecofeminist perspective, paying special attention to official domestic practices and measures in this direction.
14.30 - 16.00
Eszter Őze will dissect the biopolitical promise of predictability: how does the body of all of us become the biopolitical backdrop of the capitalist production system responsible for the climate crisis?
Climate Imagination is a marathon reading by our lead authors:
Kata Kiss is a student of the doctoral programme in Critical Psychoanalysis at the University of Pécs, her main research interests are critical psychology, continental philosophy, French philosophy, gender studies.
Zoltan Sidó, editor of the journal Fordulat and member of the Solidarity Economy Centre.
Eszter Őze is a student of the Doctoral Programme in Film, Media and Cultural Theory at the Doctoral School of Philosophy, ELTE BTK. Her dissertation deals with the history of health and education museums founded in the early twentieth century, especially the Museum of Social and Public Health.
The Unstable State of Things exhibition is part of the Risk Change (2016-2020) project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Hungarian National Cultural Fund.
The pop-up conference and the reading circle could not have been possible without the support of tranzitblog.hu.
