Climate Change: Artistic Interventions and Alternative Futures - 2025
The Summer School “Climate Change: Artistic Interventions and Alternative Futures” explores the pressing issues surrounding climate change and the role of artists in proposing new social and economic dynamics. Through an interdisciplinary approach involving scholars from usually distant academic fields such as art history, economics, management, sociology, and education, a speculative approach will be developed, aimed at understanding the dramatic environmental condition that has taken shape with the advent of the Anthropocene. In particular, the educational project moves from a reconsideration of cultural practices as the driving force behind social processes based on forms of public engagement, aimed at developing hypotheses of futuristic societies that are at least as desirable as they are practicable.
Monday 9 – Friday 13, June 2025
Department of the Arts
Teatro DAMSLab
Piazzetta P.P. Pasolini 5/b, Bologna
University of Bologna – Francesco Maria Spampinato
University of Helsinki – Marianna Vivitsou
Jagiellonian University – Michał Pałasz and Mateusz Chaberski
DAY 1 June 9 (UNIBO, JU, UH)
Getting Together: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change
9.30 Coffee and Registration
10.00 Welcome Session
• Francesco Spampinato UNIBO
• Marianna Vivitsou UH
• Michał Pałasz and Mateusz Chaberski JU
10.15 Integration & Interknowledge, Michał Pałasz JU
11.00 A Joint UNIBO, JU, UH Effort Presentation: UNA Europa Micro-credential in Sustainability and UnaVEx, Maciej Grodziki and Francesco Spampinato JU UNIBO
12.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Individual Perspectives
• Pedagogies for Climate Change - Are They Necessary? What For? Marianna Vivitsou UH
• The Ouroboros and Asclepius’ Serpent: On the Inevitable and Us, Michał Pałasz JU
• Futures Are Already Here, Mateusz Chaberski JU
• Climate Change and Contemporary Art, Francesco Spampinato UNIBO
15.00 VR Installation Introduction, Sara Molho UNIBO
15.30 Rosetta Mission 2022, Luca Pozzi (artist)
16.00 The Feral Atlas Virtual Tour JU
DAY 2 June 10 (UNIBO)
Rethinking the Present: Art, Imagination and Alternative Futures
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Introduction: On Blasted Representations, Bright Futures and Broken Screens, Francesco Spampinato UNIBO
10.40 From Artificial Paradises to Cosmopolitan Utopias. Exploring Pearls, Silver, Volcanoes, and Idols in the Early Modern Age, Maria Vittoria Spissu UNIBO
11.20 In the Depths: Mythological Creatures in Non-Linear Times, Sara Molho UNIBO
12.00 Lunch break
14.00 Slow Art and Deep Time: The Climate Crisis in the Graphic Journalism of La Revue Dessinée Italia, Valentina Cappi UNIBO
14.40 Art Against Catastrophism: Pre-Enactment as a Counter-Strategy for Endangered Waterscapes, Cristina Baldacci (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
15.20 It’s Giving Future: Solarpunk Across Screens and Soil, Simona Maria Pagano UNIBO
17.00 Keynote speech – From Ecocide to Genocide: Climate Colonialism, Eco-aesthetics, and the Seeds of Survival, T.J. Demos (University of California Santa Cruz) – Aula Magna, Complesso di Santa Cristina, Piazzetta Giorgio Morandi 2, Bologna
DAY 3 June 11 (JU)
The Post-Art of Survival: Enacting Speculative Gestures and Degrowing Academia
9.30 Coffee
10.00-10:30 Introduction to Idiotic Speculators, Mateusz Chaberski JU
10:30-12:00 Re-Imagining the Future with Idiotic Speculators. Workshop with Mateusz Chaberski JU
12.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Introduction to Degrowth, Michał Pałasz JU
14.30 Academic Growthism and Degrowing Academia. Workshop with Michał Pałasz JU
16.00 Working on Group Projects, Mateusz Chaberski JU
17.30 Our Excavation. Concept by Caterina Dufì, Emanuele Caprioli, Simone Spampinato, performance by Caterina Dufì and Maru Barucco with additional sound support from Simone Spampinato, english translation of the original poem by Allison Grimaldi Donahue
DAY 4 June 12 (UH)
Narratives of Climate Change: Re-imagining the Future with Stories
9.00 Coffee
10.00 Multimodalities, Eco-pedagogies and Pedagogies of Relationality, Marianna Vivitsou UH
10.30 Young People’s Stories of Climate Change: From Discomfort to Co-creation, Marianna Vivitsou UH
11.00 Discussion with participants
11.30 Work in groups: Drafting a Story
12.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Putting Threads Together: a Joint Workshop, Marianna Vivitsou & Mateusz Chaberski UH JU
15.00 Discussions and group work continue; peer and teacher feedback toward presentations of students’ collaborative work
DAY 5 June 13 (UNIBO, JU, UH)
Alternative Futures Salon
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Alternative Futures Salon: Presentation of Group Projects
11.00 Debriefing + Online Component Date-Polling
12.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Visit to MAMbo, Museum of Modern Art, Bologna