MEANDER International Platform is a web platform initiated by MEANDER Society for Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice (NO/DK) in 2019 and developed in collaboration with Ensayos (CL/ FR/ US), Instituto Procomum (BR) and ODD (RO/IN). The members of the four initiatives, situated in different parts of the world, come together to exchange ideas and questions regarding our relations to our environments and fellow life forms.
We live in a time where we are going through unprecedented environmental changes which threaten life on Earth. How can we create narratives that make us more sensitive to the complex web of life that covers our planet? How can we develop models for new and less harmful ways of living, and for making art?
The communication between the initiatives has for the last four months happened through sharing and responding to scores. A score is a short written instruction which is to be materialised in mediums ranging from text and drawing, to photo, collage, video and film. The scores and the responses from the participants will be available on the webpage from 12 December 2020, when a full day online + offline event is organised to mark the launch.
Additionally, the platform features short films about what each collective considers to be the most pressing issues in their locality, whilst also defining the meaning of ‘local’ for their practice.
As an open project, MEANDER will continue to be populated with proposals and responses regarding the complex issue of sustainable living. It looks to present and connect meaningful initiatives from around the world, in an attempt to take its place in what should be humankind’s primary and collective action right now.
Image credits: Cristina Bogdan, In the center of a forest there is knowledge, 2020. Digital video in response to Score 2, proposed by Instituto Procomum.
Biographies
Meander
MEANDER – Society for Ecological Thinking and Artistic Practice was established in Norway in 2018 by the artists Kjersti Vetterstad and Randi Nygård together with fellow artists Geir Tore Holm, Søssa Jørgensen and architect Kristin Astrup Aas. Through different artistic activities, MEANDER aims at contributing to broadening our understanding of the interconnected and transcorporeal nature of all living systems, and to challenge world views that have fatal consequences for life on Earth. By seeking to develop new strategies for art making that can contribute to a less harmful and more regenerative culture, MEANDER addresses the potential of artistic practices and how art can be agents of change in social and political structures.
ODD
ODD was founded in 2014 in Bucharest, grounded in the Romanian imaginary and looking to act upon the world. A space for theoretical discussion and social gatherings of all kinds, it welcomes artists, writers, researchers, philosophers, scientists who initiate discussions, workshops, reading groups, or become engaged with one of the long-term series: ODD THEORY, ODD NIGHTS, or QUIET ODD. It is run by Cristina Bogdan.
Instituto Procomum
Instituto Procomum (IP) is a Brazilian non-profit organization whose mission is to act to recognize, strengthen and protect the commons, create new community arrangements and prevent processes of enclosure by private and state action. It is, therefore, a political mission, based on the belief that the current world asks of us the emergence of a “(trans-local) citizenship based on local action with planetary awareness”. They are a platform-institution that strengthens other organizations. They have been seeking to accomplish this mission through a set of actions that follow three principles: learning how to dream again, choosing who to act with; and lowering the center of gravity.
Ensayos
Ensayos is a collective research practice initiated on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in 2010. Ensayos’ issue-based research methodologies arise from archipelagic delirium and are characterized by their sensuality and precariousness. Drawing on the existing conservation initiatives in Tierra del Fuego (WCS Parque Karukinka, Caleta Maria, and the Selk’nam Corporation Covadonga Ona), Ensayos insists on experimental practices that entangle artistic and social science methods with the environmental research efforts already underway. Though Ensayos first focused solely on the ecopolitical issues impacting the Fuegian archipelago and its inhabitants –past and present, human and nonhuman– now, other archipelagos have come into view (Norway, Australia, New York, and Sri Lanka). Ensayos (inquiries or rehearsals in English) is a global exercise in emergent forms of eco-cultural ethics.