After Growth is a symposium, a gathering of bodies and minds, but it is also an invitation to construct another future. At its core is the belief that prosperity does not depend on economic growth, and that – in the face of ongoing climate catastrophe – there is an urgent need to find new ways of living within planetary boundaries.
The concept of ‘degrowth’ emerges from the confluence of activism, ecology and economics, though it also sits within a larger cultural field of creative and artistic practice. Rather than producing blueprints of utopian visions, many of the contributors to this symposium work towards the creation of spaces where post-capitalist forms of life can be incubated.
Keynote: Visualising the Ends of Growth by TJ Demos, moderated by Angela YT Chan.
T. J. Demos is the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed
Chair in Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Visual
Culture, at University of California, Santa Cruz, and founding Director
of its Center for Creative Ecologies. Demos is the author of numerous
books, including Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (Sternberg Press, 2017); Decolonizing Nature:
Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (Sternberg Press, 2016);
The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During
Global Crisis (Duke University Press, 2013) – winner of the College Art
Association’s 2014 Frank Jewett Mather Award – and Return to the
Postcolony: Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (Sternberg
Press, 2013). He recently co-edited The Routledge Companion on
Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (2021), was a
Getty Research Institute Fellow (Spring 2020), and directed the
Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar research project Beyond the End of
the World (2019-21). Demos was recently Chair and Chief Curator of
the Climate Collective, providing public programming related to the
2021 Climate Emergency - Emergence program at the Museum of
Art, Architecture and Technology (Maat) in Lisbon. He is presently
working on a new book on radical futurisms.
Angela YT Chan is an independent researcher, curator and artist. Her
work reconfigures power in relation to the inequity of climate change,
through self-archiving, rethinking geographies and speculative
fiction. Her recent research-art commissions span climate framings,
water scarcity and conflict, and has held residencies with Arts
Catalyst, FACT/Jerwood Arts’ Digital Fellowship and Sonic Acts
environmental research residency. Since 2014, Angela has produced
curatorial projects and workshops as Worm: art + ecology,
collaborating with artists, activists and youth groups. She
co-founded the London Chinese Science Fiction Group and
co-directs the London Science Fiction Research Community. Angela
is also a research consultant, having worked in international climate
and cultural policy and on climate and sustainability projects for
major cultural institutions. Angela holds a joint honours
undergraduate in History of Art and Scandinavian Studies with
Norwegian (UCL) and an MA in Climate Change: History, Culture,
Society (KCL)
