The Lokomotiva team announced the upcoming conference "On the Edge of a Climate Disaster: Art, Culture, Ecology and Policy Making in the 21st Century", which will be held on May 20 and 21, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje.

The conference is conceived as a platform on which various theorists, practitioners, policy makers and artists will share their views on the arts and culture, how they face environmental challenges and global uncertainty, and explore and share possible ways to transform the future in a future that is good for living, for human and non-human existence (in an ecofeminist, postcolonial framework of care, solidarity and anti-capitalism).

The conference consists of lectures, discussions, presentations of art research and discourse programs, as well as an art program.

The conference is organized by Lokomotiva - Center for New Initiatives in Art and Culture and Sloboda Square, in partnership with Platform Together - Belgrade and Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje, and is part of the EU project - ACT: Art "Climate, Change".

- From transforming the policy-making process to institutional innovation and using "marginal" knowledge, we ask questions: about the position and potentials of art and culture in those processes; for a fair green transition and labor of care as a new source of green jobs; for past and future forms of organization and mobilization of the community; for institutional imagination and the creation of care institutions; for the opportunity to expand education and storytelling by creating an attachment to the living and the inanimate world; for leisure, togetherness, interdependence, coexistence and friendship; about the European colonial narrative, its extractivist heritage and the urgency of transformation.

Together, we also oppose the apolitical discourse on sustainable development and exclusively personal-political change as a manifestation of a broader process of reducing the politics of the future to seeking only compromising technocratic solutions, rather than seeking alternative visions with intersectional perspectives that challenge domineering structures. and systems that make hell on earth.

These two days of connecting broad perspectives with concrete, localized opportunities are just the beginning of the conversation and lay the foundations for further generation of alternative visions and practices that enable those visions - said the conference curators Biljana Tanurovska-Kulavkovski and Ivana Dragsic in their conference text.

Participants in the conference are Ljubica Slavkovic, Ana Mendez de Andes, Filip Stojanovski, Tomislav Vukoja, Zoran Eric, Raluca Voinea, Ana Frangovska, Iva Markovic, Aslihan Demirtas, Julia Casalini, Predrag Momcilova, Casilios Marcilova, Casino , Nikolina Priшtash, Jovana Karauliќ, Sabine Zan, Slobodanka Stevчеeska and Milos Kovaчеevi..

Moderators of the conference are Biljana Tanurovska-Kulavkovski, Ivana Dragsic, Irena Cvetkovic, Zdravko Saveski, Mariana Cvetkovic and Violeta Kacakova.

The topics of the panels are: Transformation of the policy-making approach in an era of environmental catastrophe; Institutions in culture and ecopolitics; Feminist alliances for the future; Growth Talk - A New Vision for a Sustainable Future; Artistic practices and ecopolitical perspectives; Art education and ecology, research, visions, meetings; A transformative donut economy model for a more sustainable and just society.

The art program on May 20 includes a screening of BAD film "The Labor of Panic" at 17.30 pm and a performance of "Nature Unveiled or Stories about Plants and Workers" by Vladimir Bjelicic, from 18.15 pm to 19.15 pm.

The conference is supported by the EU Creative Europe Program, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Northern Macedonia and the Heinrich Ball Foundation. The programs are in English and will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje.