From Echoes to Slogans — artists responding to crises

Talk

A day-long gathering at Framer Framed where artists explore how creative practice can respond to the climate crisis.

Organised by

Prince Claus Fund

Location

Framer Framed

Address

Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71, 1093 KS Amsterdam

From Echoes to Slogans brings together fifteen artists from around the world to reflect on art’s role in times of environmental breakdown. Through talks and performances, the programme invites new ways of thinking about connection, crisis, and care.

On Saturday, 18 October, Cycle 4 of the Fellows Award Cultural and Artistic Responses to the Climate Crisis gathers at Framer Framed for a day-long programme, "From Echoes to Slogans — artists responding to crises."

The climate crisis is not the result of "natural" processes or the responsibility of the anthropos as a whole, but rather the product of an extractivist mindset inherent to capitalism and entrenched in its imperial historical temporality. Although its impact is now felt across the globe, it disproportionately affects marginalised communities, especially in the Majority World. This collapse stems not only from the segmentation of human societies but also from a philosophical separation and hierarchisation of the human from its habitat — a schism between "culture" and "nature". The uses and understandings of technology — especially visible now in this so-called era of hyperconnectivity and hyperinformation — actively shape these fragmentations and transactional connections. Moreover, the loss of meaning produced by different processes of alienation both causes and perpetuates the crisis of our planet and humanity

There is an unquestionable urgency to restore and rethink the relations we wish to establish within human and with more-than-human communities. But how do we respond to such a systemic crisis?

Artists and cultural practitioners are essential to responding to this multidimensional reality — through approaches ranging from hands-on interventions to expansive reflections; from examining the microscopic to connecting broader communities; from documenting to advocating for climate justice; and from raising awareness to imagining paths forward. However, while they are often called upon to react and to propose futures, they work within contexts of financial insecurity, political precarity, and time constraints. The art industry itself is not exempt from the very systems of extraction, acceleration and confusion that have contributed to the environmental crisis — in fact, it often reproduces it.

"From Echoes to Slogans – artists responding to crises" brings together CAREC’s fifteen creatives to explore three crises linked to climate collapse. Through a manifesto, roundtable conversations, panels, performances, and a slogan workshop, the programme creates an experimental space — blending digital and analogue methods — where artists and audiences can explore technologies, our connections to the environment and universe, and the potential of art to move beyond "echo chambers," create imaginaries, and confront environmental breakdown.