OPEN UP – ART FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

9.4.2021
Carsten Rabe and Dr. Michael Pröpper in a presentation of their research project

Dr. Michael Pröpper and Carsten Rabe suspect that visual arts,
understood as a research practice whose specialty is the understanding
and revelation of complexity, can help. Artists work on multiple
questions that often touch complex sustainability issues. However, so far comparative empirical insights into how artistic complexity knowledge can help society solve upcoming sustainability problems have been hardly available.
Thus, central questions about the artistic contribution to sustainability remain unanswered and misunderstood. Such artistic contributions to society and their potential importance for social sustainability discourses are therefore potentially underestimated, underfinanced, and undervalued.

Dr. Michael Pröpper is a cultural anthropologist and visual artist, he
is a permanent senior lecturer at the Institute
for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg.

Carsten Rabe is a fine-arts photographer and curator. He has been
working since with several Artist-Run-Spaces in Hamburg.
Since 2010 he has curated various conceptual group exhibitions in
Germany, Denmark and France.

If you are an artist yourself and thematize sustainability questions in your work, or if you know someone who does, feel free to fill out or share our online-questionnaire to get in contact and build up a network together. Looking forward to hear from you!
https://www.limesurvey.uni-hamburg.de/index.php/survey/index/sid/864743/newtest/Y/lang/en