GESTURES OF DISAPPEARANCE: AN ONGOING WEEKLY WORKSHOP
Online | Thursdays | 6:30-8 PM (EST)
Join Murat Cem Mengüç, VisArts’ 2023 Bresler Resident, for an ongoing, collaborative artist workshop focused on carbon footprint.
The Gestures of Disappearance workshop aims to make art with the purpose of calculating its environmental impact. Although most artists are aware of and outspoken about climate change, they don’t address the issues raised by their own practices. Like most people, artists tend to believe that carbon footprint is a problem primarily caused by big industrial, economic, and political players.
However, two-thirds of the world’s carbon footprint is caused by everyday household practices and it’s evident that, unless there’s a cultural change – a paradigm shift in our carbon addiction – our civilization will face extinction. Moreover, historically speaking, such drastic cultural changes or paradigm shifts don’t occur through top-down decisions, but rather from bottom-up collective movements. Given that artists consider themselves members of a creative and forward-thinking segment of society, this workshop proposes a direct engagement with the problem.
In the Gestures of Disappearance workshop, participants will:
- Research and discuss carbon footprint and climate change in terms of its relationship to artistic practices
- Collectively develop artworks that openly disclose their carbon footprint
- Collectively realize these works
- Present the results in a public exhibition
The Gestures of Disappearance workshop is ongoing; participants are welcome to join at any time. The workshop is open to all interested participants and may be audited without commitment.
The workshop is held weekly on Thursdays from 6.30-8:30 PM (EST) via Zoom.
Note: The workshop will be on hiatus this summer; it will resume in the fall. For more information, please contact Murat Cem Mengüç at mcmenguc@protonmail.com
Image Credit: “Yard Drawing,” Murat Cem Mengüç, 2022