Art_Africa_2016_03_

FEATURE / COP21 PARIS

CREATING A CLIMATE OF FAITH IN PARIS / KAI LOSSGOTT

CREATING A

CLIMATE OF

FAITH IN PARIS

After the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, artist Kai Lossgott reflects

on experimental communal practices, social art projects and effective

mobilisation in defiance of disaster fatigue

On 12 December 2015, one hundred and ninety-five nations reached a landmark

climate agreement on carbon emissions at COP21 in Paris. Attending alongside official

negotiations, many of my fellow artists and activists were guests in Paris; from India,

Bolivia, South Africa and beyond. We were there to mobilise and monitor dialogue

around climate change.

Since the Kyoto protocol in 1997 climate science has become a part of popular

conversation. Accompanied by a new individual feeling of powerlessness in the face of

global disaster, we were asked to resort to our faith in politicans. Instead, civil society

movements offered frustrated citizens the possibility to believe in the small, measurable

results of collective action. In this way, our faith in Paris 2015 vindicated our often-fragile

beliefs in democracy.

The Anthropocene – namely the new geological epoch of the earth – is predicted to

bring increasingly hostile, uncertain and unstable conditions. It is the product of affluent

societies intoxicated with techno-industrialism and resource exploitation, blind to the

suffering created. These problems were not made in the Global South, but the South

will have to find ways to mitigate its effects, especially for the vastly under-equipped

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