"In recent years, museums have become hot spots of popular venom"
"Climate change-driven migration is expected to grow by many orders of magnitude in the coming decades. As a result, we have a perfect storm of xenophobia and social conflict, but one that is by no means a natural disaster. It's rooted in the long history of racialized colonial violence, transatlantic slavery, military invasions, voluntary brutality, extractivism, the neoliberal order, and the destruction of democratic institutions around the world. Can museums or artistic practices somehow mitigate the damage at the level of representation, symbolism, or recognition, and recover the civility that has otherwise been shattered in the context of the online culture wars, waged by troll armies, bots, and recommendation engines on a 24/7 basis? One answer to this explosive situation is to do the revolutionary work of building a multiracial politics of working-class emancipation".
"In recent years, museums have become hot spots of popular venom. Indigenous and formally colonized peoples chastise cultural institutions for continuing cultural appropriation. Activists seek to decolonize spaces by tearing down monuments to the heroes of colonization and proposing in their space an institutional and economic restructuring that is inclusive and diverse. Climate justice organizations demand that museums and cultural institutions recognize the climate emergency by distancing themselves from fossil fuel investment capital. All of these demands are demands for recognition, and more expansively, attempts to reconcile in advance a political transformation emancipated from institutional racism, xenophobia targeting minority groups, and growing socioeconomic and political inequality."
T. J. Demos, Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History and Visual Culture, and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies, UC Santa Cruz; Santa Cruz .
The CIMAM 2021 Annual Conference was held on November 5-7, 2021, hosted as initially planned by the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz and the NOMUS New Art Museum/ Branch of the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland.
During the three days of discussions, the conference focused on the two interconnected current crises of Xenophobia and Climate Change, and the sometimes hidden or unexplored connections between the two.
Keynote speakers and relevant case-study presentations showed how institutions, artists, and thinkers working together can provide practical laboratories concerning these emerging issues and offer methodological tools to combat discriminatory and nationalistic tendencies in an increasingly divisive and divided world.
Learn more about CIMAM's 2021 Annual Conference: