Between 20–22 April, Rupert invites everybody to 🔗Earth Bonds🔗, an international symposium that will raise questions about the relationship between climate change and cultural institutions. An extensive programme of lectures, workshops, performances, and installations will explore the ideas of a sustainable institution from the perspectives of environmental justice, cultural policy, technological innovation, and artistic imagination. The symposium will bring together representatives of organisations working at the intersection of contemporary art, environmentalism, and decentralised technologies.

The event will raise questions on how advanced technologies – like blockchain and DAO – can remodel our perception of the environment and reconfigure operations of art institutions? How do these complex overhauls align with the idea of sustainability in volatile geopolitical realities?

The understanding of ‘sustainability’ is adamantly changing the way we perceive our environments, actions, and various entanglements. From real-life solutions to sedative escapism – the idea, or more precisely, the hope to be able to sustain yourself and your kins became a way to fabulate our survival. No wonder that under such pressure, the idea of sustainability occasionally tends to morph into precarious ambiguity. Suddenly we are faced with uncertainty whether our actions are increasing or diminishing our chances of experiencing life after tomorrow. Or if bringing your own cup to a coffee shop while a fleet of private jets ooze in the sky is still worth the effort. 

🔗Earth Bonds🔗 will carefully forge the relationship between decentralisation of digital spaces and environmentally conscious art making. Moving through a maze of contesting ideological positions, the event will highlight ecological entanglements of art institutions and artists within and outside of the digital realm. Instead of pursuing moral high grounds of technological solutionism, Earth Bonds will think-with, dissent-within, and speak-for towards non-perfect alliances. 

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🔗Earth Bonds🔗 is supported by the Vilnius City Municipality, Nordic Culture Point, Tech Zity. Partner: Lithuanian Composers’ Union.

The symposium is part of the long-term project the sustainable institution, implemented together with partners E-WERK Luckenwalde (Germany) and LUMA Arles (France). 

the sustainable institution is co-funded by the European Union, Teltow-Fläming and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the other granting authorities. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.