Corona and Climate Change

Curated by Martina Fröschl

In the present online gallery exhibition, the two most pressing threats to humanity are merged into one topic, as there are many indications that they are not separate problems. For example, one of the leading scientists researching agents against SARS-CoVid-2, Josef Penninger, referred twice to climate change at his Billroth Lecture on October 28, 2020. He pointed out that dangerous viruses are returning to Europe more often because of global warming and confessed that we should consider our way of life, travel is a big factor in the spread of the pandemic, but also in the production of greenhouse gases. Furthermore, there are apparently people who are immune to the virus due to genetic mutations. The wave of destruction triggers another wave, a random reaction that tries to compensate for it. The exhibition shows a wide variety of work positions relating to the connection between “Corona and Climate Change”.

Among others, works will be presented that were created in the course of the research project C~ART, a collaboration between the Z_GIS of geoinformatics at the University of Salzburg and the Science Visualization Lab of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In the research project C~ART, there were two workshops, one was called Kunst~werk~statt and one was called Klima~taten~drang. Both workshops were interdisciplinary spaces in which scientists and artists with an interest in climate change topics met productively. As a result of the collaboration, actions in public space have been created and everyone can participate using the hashtag #klimawunschfiguren. There is a project website (c-art.zgis.at) with digitized works by the painter Hermann Hack and interviews with leading figures from art and science (Victoria Vesna, Hermann Hack, Peter Sellars, Helga Kromp-Kolb, Fritjof Capra, Michael Staudinger) who deal with climate change on a daily basis. In the workshops, a collaboration with Eveline Wandl-Vogt (Ars Electronica Research Institute “Knowledge for Humanity”), Elian Carsenat (NamSor.com) and Dario Rodighiero (Metalab Harvard, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society) developed, they will also give a talk and their pieces are presented in the gallery. Another contribution comes from another invited speaker at PIXELvienna: Peter Mindek, who deals intensively with the representation of molecular models in real-time environments with his colleagues at Nanographics company.

Feedback and suggestions are more than welcome, please write your concerns to: martina.froeschl at uni-ak.ac.at