IMAGINE 2020 is a network composed of eleven arts organisations from nine European countries concerned with art and climate change. The IMAGINE 2020 network’s main purpose is to use artist’s creativity to raise awareness and model solutions to challenge environmental issues. Through their expertise and connections within the art world and beyond they engage creative potential of the European cultural sector involving the general public as audience and participants.
The programme was initiated with European Commission Culture Programme funding in 2010 and works with more than 20 artists and companies actively engaged with environmental issues. The programme is working towards 2020 as a realistic target date to enable changes to stabilise the climate and secure a sustainable ecological future.
“Artists of every kind have one overriding moral duty, which is to do their work as well as possible. But since that work partly consists of responding to what the world itself is up to, it would be strange if the best work being produced didn’t take some account, in some way, of what’s happening to our climate. Art is not only about beauty: sometimes it has to warn.” – Philip Pullman, novelist
I.C.E project: ÉTABLISSEMENT PUBLIC DE COOPÉRATION CULTURELLE – LE QUAI. L’EPCC-Le Quai, Angers, France. December 05, 2011 – January, 2012
Compagnie Non Nova has been developing the project I.C.E Injonglabilité Complémentaire des Eléments (Complementary Unjugglability of the Elements). I.C.E is a project of artistic exploration concerning our relationship to ice, water, vapour, air – with the research forming a directory of public performances, films and installations. In 2009, the first realized project was called P.P.P and was dedicated to the element water as an ice exploring it in all its forms – water – vapour – and air. In 2010, two other projects where dedicated to the element air: L’après midi d’un foehn and Vortex. (Image: © Jean-Luc Beaujault)
Video on the project (in French) www.lequai.tv/fr/bdd/video_id/491
Perforations – Week of live Arts. Rijeka/Zagreb/Dubrovnik, Croatia. 20-29 October 2011
Perforations – Week of live arts is a new annual festival in Croatia created by Domino with a special focus on regional artists. The programme presents issues of identity – public, political, religious – redefining borders and space, a collective past, and personal histories, but most of all they are concerned with the présent.
Imagine 2020 on the Square. Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 15 September 15,2011 – 2 October 2011.
Every resident of Rotterdam was invited to share their wishes, aspirations and fears about the year 2020.The festival included theatrical performances Cry me a River by Anna Mendelssohn and Expanding Energy by Davis Freeman. Foodlab 2020 was a collaboration between artists, installations and kitchens. Rotterdamse Oogst provided a foretaste of the menu for 2020. What will we be eating then? Where will our food come from? And how will we dispose of our waste? A cycle trip by Parfum de Boem Boem passed sites where artists such as Harriët Van Reek & Geerten Ten Bosch showed their vision of the future. Organised by Anna Mendelssohn, Davis Freeman, Parfum de Boem Boem and Rotterdamse Oogst together with the Rotterdamse Schouwburg.
Anna Mendelsohn, Cry Me A River – a solo-climate-summit. A theatrical monologue performance about inner and outer climate catastrophes. Walking the thin ice between the personal and the political, the piece deals with the complexity of climate change communication and it’s rhetorics. Focusing on the multiplicity of talking heads, voices and opinions buzzing around this topic the work expressed emotions of fear, anger, hope and despair connected with visions of a changing climate.
Imagine 2020 network:
Kaaitheater, Brussels, Belgium (project leader)
Domino, Zagreb, Croatia
Domaine d’O, Montpellier, France
Le Quai, Angers, France
Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany
New Theatre Institute of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Transforma, Torres Vedras, Portugal
Bunker, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Artsadmin, London, UK
LIFT, London, UK
An AAJ Press series on art organisations and commissioning. Text by Zénaïde d’Albufera
AAJ Press 
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