Saving the World With Art
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
12 - 1:30 pm Eastern Time (US)
Zoom Webinar
About the Event
Greta Thunberg recently reiterated in an interview in Germany that climate change is a cultural transition. Dirk Baumanns has been aware since the beginning of his artistic engagement with climate change 15 years ago that humanity is facing a change that it last experienced comparable to the era of the Enlightenment. He has long seen himself at the forefront of this change with art. Slowly, more voices are being raised to equate art and the fight against climate change in the effort for a better future. To the extent that art has humanistic and therefore political aspirations. Unfortunately, the capitalist art market threatens to gain interpretive sovereignty by promoting only certain art productions. Museums become event locations for uninspired simply decorative artists, who mainly promise to sell many tickets through follower numbers and likes in social media. More and more media support this development through their paid entanglements with the art market and thus massively intervene in the quality control of museums. The artistic work of Dirk Baumanns rebels against these capitalistic tendencies and provokes a change in the art world, as for the actual world we all live in. With his oil-painted reinterpretations of old masterpieces, which he carries in front of him at Fridays For Future demonstrations, he confronts the museum world with the neglect of its ethical guidelines. Unfortunately, the exhibitions in museums on climate change have been few and far between worldwide. His actions like "Mona Greta" serve to continue the social sculpture of Beuys. According to the motto "Saving the world with art", the painting by Greta Thunberg is to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for climate protection.
About the Speakers
Dirk Baumanns
1980 born in Offenbach, lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany
2012 diploma, academy of art and design Offenbach
Prof. Adam Jankowski (painting)
Prof. Mariola Brillowska (performance)
2009 scholarship of the Johannes-Mosbach foundation
Barbara Dombrowski is an renowned German photographer and visual artist whom dedicates her work to places affected by climate change. She is focusing on relevant and specific climate localities and their population living between established tradition and global modernity.