MQ: Exhibition Overground Resistance

Extreme weather conditions have become the global norm. Forests are burning, permafrost soils are thawing, polar ice and glaciers melt, drought strikes once fertile regions, plant and animal species are becoming extinct on a massive scale. Yet even as the impact of climate breakdown comes to be felt everywhere, government climate policy worldwide is woefully inadequate to the urgency of the crisis. On one day, states declare a climate emergency; the next day they still sponsor fossil-fueled energy, building freeways, airports and gas pipelines, enclosing territory on whatever scale the projects demand. 

This cynical spectacle contributes nothing to planetary survival. What is urgently needed instead is decarbonization of the world economy, total reorganization of trade, food production, labor and housing, plus drastically increased taxation of climate-destructive modes of transport and forms of production that squander resources. The overall social focus must be shifted from growth and profit towards resource conservation, preservation of livelihoods, climate justice and global redistribution.

Climate justice movements worldwide are the most serious and significant drivers of this socially necessary change. Historically, resistance has often been organized “underground” by partisans or extra-parliamentary groups. Climate activism, by contrast, is coming “overground” on a massive scale, despite often crossing the boundaries of what is considered “legal.” The worldwide scope and visibility of the movement reflect the terrifying global scale of the threat and also the unprecedented social breadth and depth of collective determination to counteract it.

The exhibition brings together artists who produce their works in dialogue with the climate justice movements in which they consider themselves participants:

For example, The Natural History Museum is a mobile pop-up-museum, whose campaigns against oil industry sponsorship are often undertaken conjointly with Indigenous activists or underrepresented communities. Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination organized the “Climate Games” event during the COP21 in Paris in 2015. Tiago de Aragão produces films as a participant in the struggles of Indigenous communities in Brazil against the destruction of their livelihoods. Artists producing posters and other such practically useful materials contribute something important to all social movements. Lakota Nation artist Gilbert Kills Pretty Enemy III has produced numerous posters for the protests of indigenous Water Protectors against the Standing Rock pipeline in North Dakota. The inflatable cubes of Tools for Action, for instance, assure activists of visibility and can be used as physical barriers in confrontations with police.

The provocative text-based work Artists Must Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy by Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio confirms once and for all that nothing in this exhibition is a matter depiction or documentation in a pure sense. Rather, it is all about establishing relationships with social movements in which the artists and cultural producers are actively engaged.

A number of exhibitions within the last few years have addressed climate breakdown. The exhibition at the frei_raum Q21 exhibition space, by contrast, appears to be the first art exhibition worldwide to focus directly on climate activism.

“Overground Resistance” can be considered an extension of Oliver Ressler’s research project “Barricading the Ice Sheets” (funded by the FWF), which is comprised of  solo exhibitions at Camera Austria, Graz (04. 09. – 21. 11. 2021 ); Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb ( 30. 11. 2021 – 30. 01. 2022 ); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin (June – August 2022); Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn (09. 09. – 13. 11.2022); The Showroom, London (October – December 2022).

Admission free

Artists:
Tiago de Aragão (BRA), Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio (USA), Noel Douglas (GBR), Francisco Huichaqueo (Mapuche Nation/CHL), Gilbert Kills Pretty Enemy III (Hunkpapa Lakota of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe/USA), Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner & Aka Niviâna (MHL/GRL), Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (FRA), The Natural History Museum (USA), Oliver Ressler (AUT), Rachel Schragis (USA), Seday (FRA), Jonas Staal (NLD), Tools for Action (HUN/NLD)

Curator: Oliver Ressler, Artistic Director frei_raum_Q21: Elisabeth Hajek, Exhibition display in cooperation with Mozarteum University Salzburg

“Overground Resistance” is organised in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs and supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF: AR 526). The exhibition will be continued in a new configuration at NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus in 2022.