Climate Forum IV

Climate Forum IV – 'Our world lives when their world ceases to exist.'

The Climate Forum is a space of dialogue and exchange in response to climate change and ecological degradation across discursive, artistic, political and operational registers. It asks: How might the speculative and critical insights framed within the registers of the discursive, the affective, and the symbolic infiltrate and be operationalised within everyday working?

Climate Forum IV is programmed by Nick Aikens, Merve Bedir and Nkule Mabaso

Morning (11h-12h CEST): Prologue, Nick Aikens, Merve Bedir and Nkule Mabaso

Early afternoon (13h30-15h00): Financialization of the Environment; Fluid Practices of Survival and Resistance with Kulagu Tu Buvongan and Robel Temesgen Bizuayehu, moderated by Merve Bedir

The panel and following conversation examines the challenges of climate crisis and entrenched from the vantage point of specific, located indigenous practices. Presenting ongoing projects the work of Kulagu Tu Buvongan and Robel Temesgen Bizuayehu rehearses and institutes forms of survival, resilience, resistance and recovery, working through multiple temporalities and material infrastructures.

Kulagu Tu Buvongan is a collective of majority Manobo and Tinananun people of the Central Cordillera region of Mindanao. Their projects focus on environmental justice and indigenous struggles of the Pantaron Mountain Range. They have exhibited in SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Estación Terrena (Bogota), Para Site (Hong Kong), FONTE (São Paulo), 421 (Abu Dhabi) and Colomboscope 2024. Merv Espina is an artist and the only member of this collective based outside of Mindanao.

Robel Temesgen Bizuayehu is an Ethiopian visual artist and researcher whose practice spans painting, installation, and publication. His work explores the symbiotic relationships between people, places, and spiritual traditions, often drawing on the Ethiopian concept of Adbar—sacred natural sites believed to be inhabited by protective spirits. He is currently a PhD Fellow in Artistic Practice at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. He lives and works between Addis Ababa and Oslo.

Afternoon (15h30-16h): Screening in collaboration with AWARE : Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
A screening of Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma (Story of Beads: Anaxi’s Choice), an animated short film by artist Keywa Henri, a member of the Kalin’a Tɨlewuyu nation of ‘French Guyana’. The film was commissioned by AWARE as part of the research programme 'The Origin of Others. Rewriting the history of art in the Americas, from the 19th century to the present day'.
The screening will be introduced by the artist and followed by a brief presentation of AWARE and its Common Ground: Feminist and Decolonial Ecologies research programme.

AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions is a non-profit association, which works to make women and non-binary artists visible by producing and sharing free trilingual (French/English/Japanese) content about their work on its website. AWARE represents a diversity of voices, with texts written by over 500 researchers, curators, feminist art historians, art critics and activists from all over the world.

Keywa Henri is a Franco-Brazilian multidisciplinary artist and independent researcher, born in Kaulu/Kourou in French Guiana. The first Kalin’a Tɨlewuyu (indigenous nation of French Guiana) to graduate from the Beaux-Arts de Lyon in France, they currently live and work between French Guiana and France. They develop a protean practice that exposes intersectional issues, exploring the visual arts, cinema, literature and fashion. They elaborate a reflection rooted in the Histories of the Original Peoples of Abya Yala (‘Americas’) and work towards an indigenous protagonism in our contemporary global society, while questioning its place in the French context.

Anaïs Roesch is a researcher, curator and activist who works at the intersection of visual arts and ecology. She also coordinates the Common Ground programme on behalf of AWARE.

Matylda Taszycka is Head of Research Programmes at AWARE.

Nina Volz is Head of International Development at AWARE.

Late afternoon (16h-17h30): Curating Indigeneity and Institutional Frameworks with Sandra Benites, Pablo Lafuente and Nkule Mabaso

The discussion will consider how the deployment of indigenous frameworks and perspectives intersects with institutional frameworks, as well as the distribution of responsibilities that art institutions assume in their shift towards recognising and integrating Indigenous perspectives.

Sandra Benites is a curator and researcher. She worked as curator at MASP and the Museu dos Povos Indígenas in São Paulo, and has curated the exhibitions Dja Guata Porá: Indigenous Rio de Janeiro (Museu de Arte do Rio, 2017-18) and Indigenous Insurgencies: Art, Memory and Resistence (Sesc Quitandinha, Petrópolis, 2025). She is currently Director of the Visual Arts department of the FUNARTE (National Foundation of the Arts).

Pablo Lafuente is a curator and writer. He worked as curator at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo and editor at Afterall and Afterall Books, and taught at Central Saint Martins in London and the Universidade do Sul da Bahia in Porto Seguro. He was part of the curatorial team for the 31st Bienal de São Paulo in 2014, and is, since 2020, Artistic Director at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro.

Nick Aikens is the Managing Editor and Responsible for Research, L’Internationale Online.

Merve Bedir is an architect. She is a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne-EPFL Architecture. Bedir is a co-founder of Kitchen Workshop in Gaziantep, and Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul.

Nkule Mabaso is a researcher based at HdK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and director of Fotogalleriet, Oslo.

All times are CEST.

Booking a free place

The event is online and participation is free, however, booking is required. Enquiries to contact Dr Nick Aikens, HDK-Valand: nick.aikens@internationaleonline.org.