Justice climatique et les arts médiatiques

This project consists of preliminary research – including a needs assessment, environmental scan and community consultation – to find out what the media arts community needs in order to address the climate emergency in their work, and what role the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) can play to support them.

The climate crisis is already here, and its impacts have been unevenly distributed in alignment with systems oppression, displacing harm onto the communities least responsible for it, in favor of preserving the comfort and security of the privileged classes (Ahuja, 373).  To align with IMAA’s commitment to anti-oppression principles, as outlined in the Basis of Unity (BoU) and IMAA’s core principles, any engagement with issues around climate must be non-hierarchical and be done through anti-oppression, disability justice, and anti-racist frameworks. 

Climate justice accounts for “the structural inequalities which lie behind – and risk being reinforced by – climate change” (Baltà Portolés et al, 8). However, for many “environmental devastation is a lived reality rather than a matter of philosophical speculation or apocalyptic foreboding” (Rowan, 2). Climate crisis is often viewed in the context of long-term planning and futurity, without acknowledging that “imperialism, and ongoing (settler) colonialism have been ending worlds for as long as they have been in existence” (Yussof, 1). Any approach to addressing the climate crisis in the media arts must be grounded in this knowledge, and must center the perspectives of those most impacted. 

This project works towards incorporating climate justice as a framework into our work (IMAA and the Media Arts sector at large) as a step to determining what conditions will allow us not just to envision, but to enact, a more just and thriving world.