Marie Johanna Trautmann

“Krißenbewegung” – Performative Ways of Dealing with the Climate Crisis

Marie Johanna Trautmann – University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany

Abstract:

The climate crisis is an omnipresent problem that also affects us in art education. It presents us as a society with multiple and ambiguous challenges. We have indeed found partial solutions, such as the Agenda for Sustainable Development, which has led to Education for Sustainable Development. However, current political developments show how far away we are from a global solution. As a result, experiences of the climate crisis are often caught between personal local responsibility and a global sense of powerlessness. In my contribution, I would like to theorise the extent to which performative approaches are suitable for dealing with the climate crisis aesthetically. Performative experimentation can be a way of dealing with climate feelings, developing new forms of collective action, or physically engaging with theoretical principles and treatises. In addition to a cognitive and emotional approach to current challenges, it can enable aesthetic experiences that are transformed into aesthetically generated knowledge. I tested some of these possibilities in the open performative format ‘Crisis Movement’ (in german: Krisenbewegung) in an off-space in Karlsruhe, Germany. I opened up the space to an open group of people I didn’t know and together we developed what our Crisis Movement should look like. So, this collaborative format was very open from the beginning and thus a format that opened up new territories. I would like to present some of our exercises and experiments – not as best practice examples, but as practical reflections on theoretical research. Because in my theoretical research on the climate crisis in art education, I have been able to show the importance of an ambiguity-sensitive art education based on collaborative practices and a practice of un/learning. In my talk, I would like to combine this theoretical perspective with practical experience.