Arts
In this episode we are speaking with Jen Rae, an artist-researcher, facilitator and educator whose work focusses on environmental communication with a particular emphasis on cultural responses to climate change.Jen’s work around the climate emergency has focussed on discourses around food futures, disaster preparedness and speculative futures predominantly explored through multi-platform creative projects, research, facilitation and community alliances.She is the Director of Fair Share Fare and the Co-founder of Fawkner Commons - creative and research-informed projects that centre food justice, land remediation and social cohesion in the climate emergency context.In this episode, we discussHow the act of speculating future scenarios can benefit us as a society and the richness that creatives can offer into this spaceJen’s work as a core artist of Arts House’s 5-year Refuge project, an initiative that brings together artists, emergency service providers and communities to rehearse climate-related emergencies and explore the impact of creativity in disaster preparednessRefugium, a short film Jen recently co-created with Claire G. Coleman as part of the Refuge project, which delves into the moral dilemmas of compounding existential crises through a fictional scenario of time hacking activists as they face humanity’s greatest challengeThe importance of preserving the knowledge and skills required to meet the challenge of the climate crisis, making information accessible to our future ancestors and sharing it through meaningful storytellingConnectedness in communities, the importance of planning for ‘waves’ of response in compounding disasters, the link between loneliness and fundamentalist thinking and how an activist mindset can be a catalyst for acceptance and connectionLinks:Refugiumhttps://vimeo.com/541179309Jen Raehttps://www.jenraeis.comArts House, Refugehttps://www.artshouse.com.au/ourprograms/refuge/Fair Share Farehttps://www.fairsharefare.comThe Future of Loneliness by Olivia Lainghttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/01/future-of-loneliness-internet-isolationNihilism, fundamentalism, or activism: Three responses to fears of the Apocalypse by Richard Eckersleyhttps://richardeckersley.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Futurist_Apocalypse_2008.pdf