Equilibrium: A Public Gathering on Environmental Justice

Image: Sarah Stirk, Airborne, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Scroll down for a full schedule

Gathering: 1-7pm
Tomorrow’s Warriors Concert: 8-10pm
Serpentine Pavilion by Theaster Gates, London W2 3XA

Daytime gathering (1-7pm): free, booking required via Eventbrite
Tomorrow’s Warriors concert, 8-10pm: £5/£4 conc. Booking required via Eventbrite

This public gathering brings together interdisciplinary artists, campaigners and thinkers to address questions of environmental justice and the role of culture in creating it. 

Contributions from The Ella Roberta Family Foundation will highlight issues of urban air pollution and risks to public health whilst contributions from the Stop Ecocide Foundation will frame this problem within the context of the international conversation around ecocide. 

Conversations led by the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development [in Dhaka] will speak to the role of new frameworks for climate finance in imagining new futures, whilst those led by Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network will draw out connections between climate displacement on a global scale and racial inequity within the context of contemporary Britain. 

The programme also features a tapestry of creative interventions across forms including music, movement and performance-lecture. These point to the crucial role of the artist, in an era of ecological crisis and imbalance, of embodying alternative ways of knowing and intuiting new pathways towards equilibrium. 

Participants include social entrepreneur Hilary Cottam, activist Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, climate scientist Saleemul Huq, novelist Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Stop Ecocide co-founder Jojo Mehta, musical performer Love Ssega, legal practitioner Philippe Sands, environmentalist Eva Peace Mukayiranga, movement artist SERAFINE1369, sociologist William Lez Henry, visual artist Kiluanji Kia Henda, case worker Hera Lorandos, photographer Sarah Stirk, economist Avinash Persaud, jazz educators Tomorrow’s Warriors, artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte, and others to be announced.

PROGRAMME

1-2:45pm 

Listening session: Torkwase Dyson, Breathtaking: On Black Beauty and Other Necessary Indeterminacies (Spatial Test With Drawing, _001), 2021

Introductions: Bettina Korek, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ashish Ghadiali, Lucia Pietroiusti

Conversation: Air quality in Lewisham, with Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, Sarah Stirk and William Lez Henry

Listening Session: A new sound piece and performance by Love Ssega for Black Chapel

2:45-4:45pm

On the Sun & Sea partnership and University of Exeter’s Arts & Culture: Kris Nelson and Sarah Campbell

Introduction to Serpentine’s long-term project of environmental campaigns, Back to Earth: Rebecca Lewin

Back to Earth panel: Rugile Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelyte, Love Ssega and Hilary Cottam in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Notes on ecocide: Jojo Mehta and Philippe Sands

Performance: SERAFINE1369

4:45-7pm

The Imagination of New Futures: Saleemul Huq, Eva Peace Mukayiranga, Avinash Persaud in conversation with Lucia Pietroiusti

Screening: Janine Benuys in conversation with Kate Raworth, introduced by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Reading and conversation: Ayana Lloyd Banwo, When We Were Birds

Building Places of Sanctuary: London Refugee and Migrants Network panel, with Hera Lorandos, moderated by Ashish Ghadiali

Performance-lecture: Kiluanji Kia Henda, Something Happened on the Way to Heaven

8-10pm

Concert: Join artists from Tomorrow’s Warriors for a special performance inside the Serpentine Pavilion 2022, Black Chapel by Theaster Gates

Curated by Radical Ecology (Ashish Ghadiali and Lucia Pietroiusti) and produced by Holly Shuttleworth. Emilian Isibo: Assistant Curator. Curatorial and production advice from Amaya Jeyarajah Dent, Kris Nelson and Matthew Schmolle. In partnership with: LIFT 2022, Serpentine’s Back to Earth project, We Are Lewisham, The Ella Roberta Family Foundation, Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network, University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, University of Exeter Arts & Culture, UCL’s Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation, UCL Anthropocene & Open Society Foundations. 

Radical Ecology is supported by the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation.