Rupert launches “the sustainable institution” in partnership with E-WERK Luckenwalde and LUMA Arles

Rupert launches the sustainable institution; an international symposium series, artist in residency programme and digital toolkit specifically focused on institutional sustainability, in partnership with E-WERK Luckenwalde (Germany) and LUMA Arles (France) co-funded by The European Union.

Between April and July 2023 each institution will present an international symposium programme focused on sustainable change from an economic, humanitarian and ecological perspective. The symposiums will bring together international artists, curators, space sociologists, political geographers, economists, architectural scientists, anthropologists, conservators and design studios to collaboratively create positive sustainable transformation and tangible solutions for the cultural sector.

In 2023 Spring, Rupert, E-WERK and LUMA will launch a collaborative open call for an artist in residency programme, focused on sustainable exhibition making. This residency is rooted in the aspiration to take concrete action in the climate emergency, and deliver real material prototypes of sustainable exhibition making.

Three artists will be selected to develop new material prototypes for sustainable exhibition making with an artist fee, travel budget and production grant of 20.000 EUR. One artist will be placed at each institution and over a research and development period mentored by a jury (Curator Lucia Pietroiusti, Conservator of modern materials and contemporary art specialising in sustainable solutions for cultural heritage, Director of Materials at Ki Culture, Advisor at Gallery Climate Coalition, architectural scientist, designer and educator, Mae-ling Kokko, Kim Kraczon, Artist Asad Raza, LUMA Atelier, Artistic Director Jan Boelen, Rupert Curator of the Residency Programme, Viktorija Šiaulytė and E-WERK Artistic Director, Helen Turner), so as to support each artist in reaching their goal. Each artist will then take residence at their respective institution to develop the prototype in Spring 2024.

Alongside this, partners will launch a digital toolkit as an open resource and tool for culture to improve ecological, economic and human sustainability. The toolkit will launch on the 22 March and function as a think-tank on how to become more sustainable on an economic, ecological and humanitarian level. This will be made available online to the public, who can use the results and models developed during the project as inspiration for their own transformation process towards sustainability.

Helen Turner, Artistic Director, E-WERK Luckenwalde, said,

“the sustainable institution is a call to action for innovation, for artistic agency to reclaim its authority in socio-political change and to activate new material approaches and territories in order to stimulate urgent change to the cultural sector and inspire action led thinking. We are pleased to partner with Rupert and LUMA Arles to raise questions and harness debate around systemic change, a slower pace, better working conditions, planetary calm, and economic and ecological progress in a post pandemic world. Each symposium will have a unique programme but what they all have in common is a deep desire to provide transformation, tangible, and creative outcomes for our industry.”

Viktorija Šiaulytė, Curator, Rupert, said,

“Rupert is glad to tackle the contested and sometimes ambivalent notion of sustainability together with LUMA Arles and E-WERK Luckenwalde, as culture should be the place where these discussions about the complexities and contradictions brought about by climate change take place. Accepting these contradictions and the imperfection of our everyday actions, we are looking forward to tracing affirmative steps and hopeful technologies towards respectful approaches between art production and what comes after.”

Jan Boelen, artistic director of Atelier LUMA, said,

“Atelier LUMA investigates the many layers of the bioregion. We gather loose historical, cultural, environmental, social, economical elements and weave them together into potential projects.”

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Rupert
EARTH BONDS
20–22 April 2023

On 20–22 April Rupert will invite cultural practitioners and the wider public to explore the fraught relationship between cultural institutions, artistic practices, advanced technologies and the material implications of climate change. A programme of keynote lectures, workshops as well as performances, installations and readings will delve and contest the idea of a sustainable institution from the angles of environmental justice, cultural policy, technological innovation and artistic imaginaries.

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 draw from the relationship between decentralisation of digital spaces and matters of care as strong political gestures towards non-perfect collectivity.

Atelier LUMA – LUMA Arles
Bioregional Design Practices
26–27 May 2023

Since 2019, Atelier LUMA is conducting a research project that focuses on the construction of architectural projects designed for the challenges of the 21st century, Building for Uncertainties. The architects and designers are developing a building approach, and a prototype of how local resource management can be applied to architecture and design guided by two key concepts: frugality and resilience. Frugality involves limiting the use of resources and energies. Resilience is pursued by integrating climate, social, and economic uncertainties into the building’s structure, spaces, and uses. Working alongside Atelier LUMA, BC Architects & Materials and Assemble Studio have helped research and develop new construction materials – both structural and non-structural – sourced and transformed within 70 kilometers through adecentralized production platform. In this context, Atelier LUMA will organise a symposium to present its methodology of (a) Bioregional Design Practice addressing issues around sustainable and locally sourced design, architecture and scenography. Conferences, presentations, student workshops, and site visits will be organised to provide a platform of exchanges between experts, practitioners, and students in Arles on the Parc des Ateliers.

E-WERK Luckenwalde
BURN OUT
1–2 July 2023

On 1–2 July 2023 E-WERK Luckenwalde will present BURN OUT; a two day symposium and performance programme, which intends to reveal the psychological and unconscious trauma of our own complicity in human and planetary BURN OUT. Say NO to our current unsustainable working conditions, and propose human, economic and ecological alternatives. The symposium speakers include Anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli, Artist Pan Daijing, Author and Critic, Hettie Judah and Political Geographer Sinthujan Varatharajan. The symposium will address de-growth, radical democracy and care through three panel discussions and will raise questions including how can we begin to enact radical care on an immediate, local and global level to repair colonial exploitations? What does radical ecological democracy look like? Is degrowth a viable possibility to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050? How can we awaken consciousness to perform a drastic, urgent and immediate paradigm shift? A full list of speakers and artists will be announced in late Spring 2023.

On 1–2 July E-WERK will also present a performance programme featuring artists including FM Einheit, Lauryn Youden and Pan Daijing to create pockets of non-didactic reflection, in an effort to champion art as an equally valuable form of knowledge and has been curated to include intersectional, intergenerational and postcolonial perspectives from artists addressing sub-themes of BURN OUT, including vulnerability, de-growth, care and pace. The full programme will be announced in late Spring 2023.

BURN OUT will inaugurate the expansion of EW into a 100% C02 neutral E-CAMPUS. In 2022 the city of Luckenwalde, in collaboration with EW, received a major grant to transform the adjacent Bauhaus Stadtbad into ‘Stadtbad Live’ – a new venue dedicated to experimental live art, powered by 100% C02 negative energy Kunststrom – produced on site at EW. BURN OUT will present performances across four sites in Luckenwalde: E-WERK’s Turbine Hall, FLUXDOME, Stadtbad Live and the adjacent abandoned warehouse next door to E-WERK.

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Co-funded by the European Union, Teltow Fläming and the Lithuanian Cultural Council.

Symposium Earth Bonds is also co-funded by Vilnius city municipality, Nordic Culture Point.

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.