JUST ART is the name of the research project in which ten higher education institutions and forty social partners from rural and urban regions – from the Randstad to Aruba – come up with new perspectives and solutions in the fight against climate injustice. The ultimate goal: to help people take action.
Climate justice
Katja Kwastek is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and is associated with the project on behalf of VU Amsterdam. Climate issues play a major role in her work and she is one of the co-founders of the Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam. 'There we show that humanities and art can play an essential role in thinking about ecology, climate change, pollution, and the extinction of species. After all, these are not only technical problems, but also ethical and social issues.'
According to Kwastek, the great added value of art research is that art appeals to people on more levels than just the rational. 'Art offers different possibilities than hardcore science,' she explains. 'It allows people to feel, see and experience and therefore reaches them on a different level. That is exactly what we want to achieve with JUST ART.'
Groundbreaking
Thanks to a six-year grant from the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA), ten PhD students will be appointed, two of whom are at VU Amsterdam. 'A large proportion of the ten PhD students are artists. That is really groundbreaking', says Kwastek. 'These people not only create works of art but also conduct artistic research. They collaborate with scientists, study archives and work on location.'
It also works the other way around: scientific PhD students, postdocs, and project staff who not only write, but also experiment with creative methods, for example by literally standing with their feet in the mud or going into the field together with stakeholders and sharing experiences. 'This creates new insights and other forms of knowledge creation, which lead to awareness about climate (in)justice and really get people thinking and working.'
