“What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now!” Battle cries of climate change activists like that can be understood as evidence for the proposition that especially in recent years climate crisis and species extinction have become a sounding crisis. Responsible for this novel energizing sound of the crisis are – despite the long history of the green movement – in particular the climate activist movements Fridays for Future (FFF) with its female spokesperson Greta Thunberg and a majority of female activists, and Extinction Rebellion (XR). They started their protests in European metropolises in and around 2018; over the course of 2019, European climate activism transformed from a local and regional into a global, hybrid off- and online movement with allies and offshoots on every continent.

One of its most important allies’ are artists researching via the means of sound political and energetic alternatives to contemporary practices, institutions, rationalities, and sensibilities of western, capitalistic societies, which are of European origin. The lecture series is intended to spur the discussion about the potential of sound to uncover new analytical and methodological approaches and tools, which are needed to cope with the current climate crisis as the biggest threat to humanity.

The lecture and workshop series comprises two events in March 2022, which will be focusing on artistic, feminist, and new materialist approaches to the relationship of climate change and sonic agency.

March 10, 2022, 17:00 to 18:30, University of Copenhagen, Southern Campus, room 15a.0.13

Guest speaker: Dr. Åsa Helena Stjerna, Sound Artist and Artistic Researcher, Stockholm (S)

Sonic Visions of the Arctic:
Tracing Sound’s Inherent Agency

March 24, 2022, 17:00 to 18:30, University of Copenhagen, Southern Campus, room 15a.0.13

Prof. Dr. Salomé Voegelin, Sound Artist and Professor of Sound, London College of Communication, London University of the Arts (UK)

Listening to Wicked Problems:
Sound Studies as Transversal Studies

You can find more details on both lectures right here — on the project website of Sounding Crisis: Sonic Agency as Cognate Energies for Climate Action in Denmark/Greenland & Australia