Launch of the publication Arterritory Conversations: Detox and Healing for the Planet
The Arterritory.com culture and art portal is launching its annual “Arterritory Conversations” publication, which is this year devoted entirely to conversations and contemplation about environmental and ecological themes. In keeping with the spirit of the times, “Arterritory Conversations: Detox and Healing for the Planet” is published online.
Arterritory.com director Una Meistere says: “Like a gong whose sound reverberates in each cell of our body, the double crisis of climate and pandemic has raised a number of big questions that were formerly classed under such headings as ‘science’, ‘religion’, ‘art’, ‘politics’, ‘economics’, etc. and that more or less existed and were debated only within their respective ‘territory’. But it is now clear to anyone who cares for the planet, and thus also a sustainable future for human beings, that the only solution lies in interaction.”
What does it mean to be a human and to be alive? What is the footprint we leave on the world, and is it within our power to change that footprint? Is it possible to restart the biosphere, and is that what is happening right now? What is the next step after the demystification of the “crown of creation”? How do we escape the frame of the “economic robot”, or will artificial intelligence push us even deeper into it? Is science the tool that helps us understand the world, or is it perhaps art, in some way, that helps us to do so? What can each of us do, personally, to make this world better?
“It’s finally time that we wake up and realise that all of us – men, women, children – are part of the Big Forest,” we are reminded in one of the interviews in this publication by Puwe Puyanawa, the spiritual leader of the Puyanawa tribe in Brazil.
In this journal, seventeen vivid personalities – artists, philosophers, anthropologists, shamans, designers, curators, architects, directors and scientists – try to find answers to these questions. We believe that genuine, in-depth conversation is one of the last remaining, foolproof sources of meaning in an age of fake news and information overload; it is also, at the same time, a tool for such transformation. According to Theodore Zeldin, valuable conversations are those from which one is “willing to emerge a slightly different person”. We hope that these conversations are worthy of such willingness. Among Arterritory.com’s conversation partners in this publication the reader meets anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis; artists Ernesto Neto, Marguerite Humeau, Miķelis Fišers, Lin May Saeed and Anton Vidokle; director Stefan Kaegi, who is a co-founder of the Rimini Protokoll project; the PROLOG +1 architecture collective; ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram; and others.
The visual identity of the publications is developed by artist Kirils Kirasirovs. Content for “Arterritory Conversations: Detox and Healing for the Planet” has been contributed by Una Meistere, Helmuts Caune, Sergejs Timofejevs, Daiga Rudzāte, Olga Abramova and Karīna Krista Līkanse.
“Arterritory Conversations: Detox and Healing for the Planet” is released in two separate editions – in Latvian and English – which can be purchased in the “Arterritory Publications” section of Arterritory.com. By buying this journal, you are also supporting the continuation of the Arterritory.com portal.
For their support in the creation of this publication, we express our thanks to AS “Latvijas valsts meži” (Latvia’s State Forests), VV Foundation and Vita Liberte personally, and also the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA).
