Artists, academics, and environmental activists got together in the Tate Exchange space of Tate Modern recently for a two-day event called The Future of Living.
The main organisers were the Brixton-based 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning organisation and the Peoples’ Bureau who described the event as one in which artists and makers can “think about the future of making in order to survive and thrive.”
I attended an event called Building Community with the Anti-Fracking Nanas, and managed to speak to People’s Bureau co-founder Eva Sajovic.
Eva is an artist-photographer from Slovenia who now lives and works in London working trough socially engaged, participatory practice to explore “the drivers of global displacement such as regeneration, poverty, trafficking, culture and climate change.
Eva was joined on the day I visited by the Lancashire-based Anti-fracking Nanas, who were surrounded by freshly-baked cupcakes and were unsurprisingly very happy given that only one day before Boris Johnson had announced a halt to fracking in the UK.
Eva and her collaborators are committed to art as a way of subverting the status quo in a way that might affect political change, as you can hear her explain in the video below.
The event Eva mentions at the end of the interview takes place at the Tate Exchange space from November 28th to December 1st, and is organised by another organisation Eva is involved with, called Picturing Climate. Over four days a series of workshops and debates will “explore the impact of climate change on food and livelihood around the world through the lens of art and the humanities.” All the sessions are open to the public with no registration required.
Eva’s efforts and those of the other artists involved in the Tate Exchange events are part of an environmental movement that has been helped greatly by Greta Thunberg and the campaign she began by protesting in front of the Swedish Parliament back in 2018.
More and more people I know are now paying attention to the need to reduce plastic and other waste. It’s a reminder of the impact that one person can have, and of how – if we want to change the world for the better – we have to start by doing something ourselves.