A well-placed table is a bridge to move – designing frameworks for climate-communication and curating conversation spaces
The conversation-series is an exploration of how transformative climate-communication can look like and be supported, and whether conversations can be an additional way to disruptive protest forms of activism.
The project looks at how to design for empathy and agency and explored the question of how spaces can be designed and curated to open up for emphatic and moving conversations which mediate the emergency and inform agency
“What we do over the next three to four years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity. We are in a very very desperate situation.” – David King, 2021
Current responses to the social-ecological status quo which emerge from the Climate and Ecological Emergency (C.E.E.) are social movements and activist groups, like Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future or The Last Generation. The groups follow different tactics and act on different radicality levels. While Fridays for Future mainly practices announced peaceful strikes, the Last Generation sees the need for much stronger and radical protest forms, such as roadblocks or sit-ins in combination with gluing oneself to the streets or throwing food onto famous paintings. However, these more extreme forms evoke very divided opinions and reaction amongst the civil society.
“The climate crisis needs solutions for society as a whole, and we can only find and achieve them together, not by turning people against each other in everyday life” – Annika Rittmann, Fridays for Future
The project departed in the understanding of a much-needed system change in a polarized and divided society. Because different addressees respond differently to diverse ways of communication I explored alternative ways of engaging with the general public, when it comes to behavioural change and opinion forming.
The conversations were curated and informed by inviting the place and the emotional body to the table. Different beliefs, dreams, and realities come together while words, identities and psychological distance often end up distancing the different parties and stakeholders from each other, so after a process of connecting to the place, the own emotions and ‘the other’, the conversations were mediated through different conversation tools and methods, like “talking artefact” and “conserving intentions” which looked at how to move into agency, how to go from ‘knowing’ into ‘feel-knowing’, how to co-curate the emergency, and by translating Non-violent communication into a framework to move within.
Germany, spring 2023, activists.
Glued hands meet asphalt.
A foot meets a belly.
Aggression meets despair.
Resistance meets resistance.
…and I am asking “how do we meet?”The Family-table.
Different realties meet different beliefs.
Disbelief meets not wanting to believe.
Cognitive dissonance.
Tears meet emotional disconnection.
Resistance meets resistance.
…and I am asking “how do we meet?”Decisions are made indoors.
Opinions are formed, futures discussed and decided.
Sterile and closed off. Where do we meet?
“Knowing” wants to move into “feel-knowing”.
Stagnation wants to move into agency.
Polarization into connection.
…and I am asking
“how can we make bridges at the table?”
Why don’t we talk about the future of agriculture in closed-off, indoor spaces and not outside on the fields where the poison makes the field look as if it has bleached hair?
Why don’t we talk about energy transitions, and the opening of new mines right next to the hole that is swallowing whole villages and their stories?
The events have taken place on different sites; inviting the place to the table.
One conversation was for example held next to a dried-up stream, in a meadow full of ticks, in an area of southern Sweden where the dust blew through the streets because the ground craved rain.
Another conversation took place right next to a preschool and between playground equipment. The topic of this conversation was “Can we still bring children into the world?” And while thoughts were exchanged, in the background were the sounds of laughter and the shouting of children, which wove themselves into the conversation.
The table as a social cultural asset.
The table as a starting point for discussions, conversations and decisions.
Table-conversations as political events.
