SDNOW4 Subversive Design—How should we respond to the climate crisis?

“Around the year 2030, we will be in a position where we probably set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of industrialized society have taken place.” Greta Thunberg (June 2019)

Earth Overshoot Day marks the day when humanity’s yearly demand for natural resources (e.g. oil, minerals, livestock, etc.) exceeds what can be regenerated in that year. In the year 2000 it fell on September 23. This year it fell 56 days earlier on July 29, which means that our natural resource deficit and accumulated waste problem is worsening.

On November 14, join us for drinks and spend the evening chatting doomsdays, and being inspired by how the community (XR Filmmaker Oliver Clifton), design (RMIT Design Javier de Urquijo Isoard) and cultural systems (Artist Debbie Symons) are responding to the climate crisis we’re in.

Facilitators: Ollie Cotsaftis (RMIT Design, future ensemble) and Sarah McArthur (City of Melbourne CityLab)

Session time: Thursday 14 November 17:00 - 21:00 (Welcome and quick intros around 18:00 followed by chats over drinks)

Venue: Troika Bar, 106 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

This event—part of SDNOW4, an Asia-Pacific conference about design, strategy, ethics and futures—is open to the public.

For more info on SDNOW4 please visit sdnow.co.

SDNOW4 ticket holders, we will continue the conversation Friday November 15 and Saturday November 16. More info at sdnow.co/break-outs/subversive-design.

See you all soon!

Melbourne Speculative Futures

This event is located on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.

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On November 14, Debbie will present Counting One to Four: Nature morte, video (2015)—event image extracted from the Art work.

In 1972, 114 nations attended the first Earth Summit in Sweden to discuss the environment. Since then, 25 additional Earth Summits have occurred across the globe. Despite these talks, the global mean temperature continues to rise and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is now 395 parts per million (as at 2015), approximately 100 parts per million higher than the maximal values seen over the past 740,000 years.

'Counting One to Four: Nature morte' visualises the predicted consequences of our warming atmosphere on the entirety of the Earth’s biodiversity through the use of percentage formulas. Referencing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2014 business as usual RCP 8.5 model allows the work to move beyond a simplistic representation of damaged nature, to a multifaceted analysis of cause and effect. With projections of up to 52% of all terrestrial mammals, reptiles, marine species, amphibians and insects committed to extinction by 2100.

'Counting One to Four: Nature morte' was exhibited as part of the Art + Climate = Change 2015 festival in Melbourne, ARTCOP21 in Paris at Galerie Prodromus, Federation Square, Melbourne and in New York City.

Debbie Symons’ practice is multi-disciplinary and uses a range of mediums to communicate central themes in her work: humanity’s complicated relationship with the natural environment, the dynamics of the global political economy and the effects of consumer culture. With a strong research base in contemporary science and the pressures impacting threatened species, Symons collaborates with scientific organisations such as the IUCN Red List to facilitate the statistical data that informs her practice, investigating and revealing inextricable links between sourced data. Completing her PhD at Monash University in 2015, Symons works have been exhibited both internationally and nationally.