Amanda Masha Caminals
area: Curator, Theorie
Key Facts
nationality
Spanienarea
Curator, Theorieresidence
Gijónrecommending institution
frei_raum Q21 exhibition spacetime period
October 2021 - October 2021Amanda Masha Caminals is co-director and curator of the Mutant Institute of Environmental Narratives (IMNA), the artistic laboratory for climate action of Matadero Madrid, the Innovation and Technology for Development Centre of the Technic University of Madrid (itdUPM) and the Environment and Mobility Area of the Madrid City Council.
IMNA fosters artistic practices in connection with journalism, science and technology as a response to the challenges of the environmental crisis. She is also Advisor to the European Commission S+T+ARTS Prize, an initiative to foster alliances between science, technology and the arts, that effectively implement a European approach to technological innovation centred on human needs and values. Previous to that, she directed the CITY STATION of the Environmental Health Clinic by artist Natalie Jeremijenko at the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) and the Barcelona City Council. She is founder of the organization Translocalia, a network of artists, curators and designers to plan for the future through art. As an independent curator she recently curated the 2019 edition of Mobile Week Barcelona, a 10 days festival before the Mobile World Congress of Barcelona that formulates an open space of dialogue around the impact of digital technology in society. She has worked in institutions including the Institute of International Visual Arts in London and Casa Triângulo in São Paulo. She holds a BA in Humanities from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, a Degree in History of Art from the University of Barcelona and an MA Hons in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London.
In relation to the exhibition Overground Resistence, curated by Oliver Ressler and on artists whose artistic practice relates to climate activism, cultural producers whose works relates the exhibition's theme are invited to give a talk in the exhibition and get acquainted with the overall project. In response to that, my proposal is the following one:
New narratives for a non-dystopic ecological transition
Climate justice movements have long and largely contributed to give visibility and name to the global threat of the environmental crisis. Massive scale “overground resistances” have functioned as lobbies to prompt different narratives to that of the global geopolitical elites and mass media: one of a climate “crisis” and nearby collapse instead of one of a mild climate “change”; one of deceleration and progressive retreat instead of one of “sustainable developments”.
But what are the terms of the ecological transition that we must undertake now? How might such movements act both as resistance apparatuses and propositional devices?
Today, more than ever, we need initiatives that help us foster our collective imagination with the possibility of non-dystopic futures, of affective political strategies weaving resilient communities. What role can art play on that? What imaginaries can it activate?