Gathering around the Wreckage: Oliver Ressler on Climate Activism in Europe
Co-sponsored by the Minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST) at Brandeis University
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
12-1:30 pm Eastern Time (US) / 6-7:30 pm German time
Zoom Webinar
You can watch a recording of the complete event by clicking the button above.
About the Event
Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker whose work has focused on global warming as a central theme ever since he first began to exhibit. One of his first solo exhibitions was “100 Years of Greenhouse Effect” at Salzburger Kunstverein (1996). Several exhibitions, films, installations, billboards and photographic works on the theme have followed since then.
Oliver Ressler will talk about a cycle of films – “Everything's coming together while everything's falling apart” (2016 – 2020) – that follows the climate justice movement in its struggles to dismantle an economic system heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
In the first film activists contest the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015, that proved the incapacity of governments to commit themselves to any binding agreement that would curtail global warming. The film on the Ende Gelände action in 2016 shifts the focus to a massive civil disobedience action at the Lusatia lignite coal fields (near Berlin), where 4,000 activists entered an open-cast mine. The film on the ZAD focuses on Europe’s largest autonomous territory that emerged from the struggle against the new airport of Nantes in France. The ZAD is a successful example that the creation of alternatives and resistance need to happen at the same time. The film about Code Rood highlights a civil disobedience action in the port of Amsterdam in June 2017, Europe’s second-largest coal port.
Click the link to watch the film Everything's coming together while everything's falling apart: Ende Gelände on Youtube.
About the Speaker
Oliver Ressler lives and works in Vienna. He produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate catastrophe, forms of resistance and social alternatives.
He has had comprehensive solo exhibitions at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville; Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; SALT Galata, Istanbul and currently at Cultural Centre of Belgrade.
Ressler has participated in more than 400 group exhibitions, including Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven; MASSMoCA, North Adams, USA; the biennials in Prague (2005), Seville (2006), Moscow (2007), Taipei (2008), Lyon (2009), Venice (2013), Quebec (2014), Jeju (2017), Kyiv (2017), Gothenburg (2019), Stavanger (2019), and at Documenta 14, Kassel, 2017 (exhibition organized by EMST).
Ressler directs “Barricading the Ice Sheets”, a research project on the climate justice movement, funded by the Austrian Science Fund.
He was the first prize winner of the Prix Thun for Art and Ethics Award in 2016.
Oliver Ressler has a new Youtube Channel with his films on global capitalism, forms of resistance, social alternatives, racism and global warming. He adds one film every week, available for free. So far there are 6 films; till the beginning of next year there will be 31 films. Please subscribe, turn on the notifications and share.
Find more information about Oliver Ressler's work on his website and follow him on Instagram.