Just Art
How can artistic research contribute to new perspectives on climate justice? JUST ART is a six-year research programme in which artists, researchers and societal partners collaborate on research into climate, justice and possible futures.
Exploring possible futures
Within JUST ART, the Just Futures research theme focuses on possible futures and on how we can imagine and shape them from different perspectives. ArtEZ is a research partner within this theme.
Senior researcher Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko supervises PhD candidates conducting research within JUST ART from the Professorship in Design. She is an official co-supervisor of one PhD candidate and an advisor to a second. She also contributes her expertise in artistic research.
Together with project leader Corelia Baibarac-Duignan (University of Twente), she works on developing the goals and approaches of Just Futures. This includes educational workshops, the development of a joint programme between AKI ArtEZ Academie voor Art & Design and the University of Twente, and the co-development of academic publications.
Artistic research into ecology and living materials
ArtEZ's involvement in JUST ART connects with AKI Biomatters, an artistic research programme that explores ecological questions around working with living bodies in art and design practices.By using art and design as ways of conducting research, the programme creates space to approach questions about ecology and the future not only theoretically, but also through making, experimentation and the development of new practices.
What does this mean for students?
The involvement in JUST ART connects research and education. Students have the opportunity to engage with ecological questions and explore how artistic and design practices can challenge existing narratives around climate justice and just futures.
Within Just Futures, a cross-disciplinary education programme is being developed. Students will explore how dominant assumptions and the perspectives from which we imagine the future can be challenged. They will also learn to navigate different research approaches, including academic methodologies, and to work in ways that allow time for experimentation and the research process.
The collaboration between AKI ArtEZ and the University of Twente creates opportunities to connect knowledge and methods from art, design and climate justice. Students can explore how social and ecological questions can be approached through participatory and experimental practices, as well as from perspectives that are often underrepresented in dominant frameworks.
In this way, students learn to approach social and ecological questions not only through existing academic and practice-based frameworks, but also by making, experimenting, collaborating and exploring different perspectives. Within the programme, this can include working with more-than-human bodies and considering how these perspectives can influence the way we imagine possible futures.
Working together to develop new knowledge
JUST ART brings together artists, researchers, campaigners and communities in rural and urban regions across the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The project aims to develop diverse strategies for climate justice through artistic research and creative practice.
Within Just Futures, this collaboration takes shape through education, PhD supervision, workshops and joint publications. For ArtEZ, the project provides a national research environment in which academic and artistic research and practice come together to explore new ways of imagining and shaping just futures.
