School of Resistance: Environmental Repercussions

When a recent UN report noted that the 4-7% CO2 emission drop caused by the Corona virus would have to be replicated every year until 2030 in order to control the climate crisis, it seems like the modern world opened  Pandora’s box. From predictions of mass flooding and water-borne disease to uninhabitable temperatures and irreparable destruction to biodiversity, visions of the future are bleak. With such a dark, but very real message, how do we find hope? How do we resist in a way that can build a future, rather than just preserve the present? And how do these new ecological hopes shape our methods of resistance; should we be occupying coal fields and rainforests in order to push for renewable energy or reject modern consumption altogether and move closer to nature? In the seventh episode of the School of Resistance series, NTGent and the IIPM bring together some of the leading fighters in the environmental movement as well as thinkers and theorists, such as the co-founder of the movement Extinction rebellion Gail Bradbrook, the Canadian philosopher Alexis Shotwell and the climate justice activist Alice Swift, to discuss their strategies of resistance and environmental visions, hoping to find where they converge. This will be a discussion about the diversity of ecological thinking, and what ‘resisting’ might well entail.

Dr Gail Bradbrook is a co-founder of the social movement Extinction Rebellion (XR) which rapidly spread internationally since its launch in October 2018. Having been researching, planning and training for mass civil disobedience since 2010 and having been arrested four times for acts of civil disobedience, Gail Bradbrook is a pivotal figure in the world of climate activism.

Alexis Shotwell is a professor at Carleton University, on unceded Algonquin territory. She is the co-investigator for the AIDS Activist History Project, and author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.

Alice Swift is a British climate justice activist and academic based in the North of England. She is working on a PhD at the University of Manchester on ‘social reproduction in the European climate camp movement’ mainly focusing on Ende Gelände and the UK equivalent; Reclaim the Power. She is interested in how autonomous left infrastructure feeds into protest camps and how strategies, tactics and ideology develop and travel between national boundaries. She is a co-founder of the UK Fossil Free divestment movement and a member of the anti-capitalist organisation Plan C.

The School of Resistance is a discourse format with experts on change from around the world: artists, activists, politicians and philosophers.

On 20 April 2020, the price of oil fell below zero for the first time in history. It was not the only world record caused by Covid-19. In only a few months a malicious virus succeeded in doing what worldwide protest marches and general strikes could not: slowing down our planet. Correction: slowing down all human activities on this planet. Suddenly we as a society remember the importance of “economy” as a way to support life and not to make profit at any price. But how can we shape the future of our planet without falling back into old, destructive patterns? In order to solve the problems we face today and to find valuable alternatives for the future, the School of Resistance creates a platform of experts on change around the world: artists, activists, politicians and philosophers. The IIPM continues together with NTGent its work on the contradictions of the global economy: using the means of activism and art, the aim is to create a blueprint for a politics of resistance. The debate series consists of a bi-weekly livestream and will be concluded with an event in February 2021 at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 

+++ The livestream takes place every two weeks on Thursdays at 18:00 (CET), smaller time shifts are possible depending on the residence of the guests and will be announced.  +++