Climate Propagandas Congregation

2024

December 14-15, 2024
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht

Climate Propagandas Congregation is a two-day gathering with cultural workers, theorists, activists, and organizers to collectively imagine and propagate forms of meaningful collective survival in—and in spite of—the present extinction wars.

In 1622, the Vatican founded the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide), to propagate the Catholic faith facing the rise of Protestantism in Europe. This constituted the first known propaganda department in history. Four hundred years later, the Climate Propagandas Congregation gathered to study climate propagandas and to collectively propagate alternative presents and futures.

Climate Propagandas Congregation takes place in a large-scale installation, best described as an “immersive diorama.” The diorama depicts biota of the geological era known as the Ediacaran (635 million years to 541 million years ago), which was a unique non-predatory cooperative ecology consisting of beings that were neither plants nor animals. This “pre-socialist socialist ecology” teaches that complex life on earth propagates from a history of fundamental collectivity, not Darwinist competition.

In the installation, Ediacaran biota are combined with the faces of historical revolutionaries: the ancestors from whom contemporary radical egalitarian imaginaries have been inherited.

With contributions by: Radha D’Souza; TJ Demos; Urok Shirhan; Nilüfer Koç (Kurdistan National Congress); Sven Lütticken; Jay Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux (Laboratory for Insurrectionary Imagination); Serda Demir and Iliada Charalambous (True Counterpower) with the Sudanese Refugee Collective, Colored Qollective, Woonopstand, and XR Justice Now; Varsha Gandikota (Progressive International); Paul Goodwin; Jodi Dean; Andrew Curley; Steve Lyons (Not An Alternative); Julie de Lima (National Democratic Front of the Philippines); Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei; Chris Keulemans; Alexandra Martens Serrano; Clara Balaguer; and Jeanne van Heeswijk a.o.

PROJECT BY

Jonas Staal

PRODUCTION STUDIO JONAS STAAL

Nadine Gouders (project coordinator Studio Jonas Staal); Paul Kuipers (architect); Remco van Bladel (designer); Tom Estrera III (motion graphic designer); Ruben Hamelink (photo and video documentation); Michael Klinkenberg and Niklas van Woerden (Studio Kunstwerk)

PRODUCTION BAK, BASIS VOOR ACTUELE KUNST, UTRECHT

Ollie Paterson (production); Alexandra Martens Serrano (coordination); Dieudonnee Twickler (communication); Clara Balaguer (curator civic praxis); Geo Barcan (coordinator studies & fellowship for situated practice); Jolijt Bosch (education); Esther Dascha Westra (rentals and administration assistant); Gerardo Gomez Tonda (research assistant); Maria Hlavajova (general director); Jeanne van Heeswijk (artistic director); Benjamin Henninger (coordinator baksourcing & baksorting); Basja Koetsier (office); Daniel Lodeweges (building management & technique); Grace Lostia (b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN); Wietske Maas (convener research & publications); Dina Mohamed (convener fellowship for situated practice); Jo-Anneke van der Molen (education); Alfredo Alejandro Navarrete Cortes (coordination and office assistance); Lisanne van Vucht (executive director); Bart Witte (outreach & operations)