Promoting Sustainability
Lecture at the "Transformationen der Theaterlandschaft" symposium
Dr. Maximilian Haas, Universität der Künste, Berlin
& Prof. Dr. Sandra Umathum, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz, Berlin
Exposé
In 2015, the United Nations achieved a legally binding agreement to limit climate change to significantly under 2 degrees centigrade, optimally to a level of 1.5 degrees, in comparison to the pre-industrial level, because the climate consequences beyond this increase of global average temperatures would no longer be controllable. As the latest progress reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proves, the 2-degree marker will already be passed in 2050 if no immediate, fast and drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions takes place. In comparison to agriculture or industry, the CO2 emissions caused by the independent performing arts may seem marginal. However, measured against the planetary stress limits, they are clearly too high. This will play a decisive role in the development of the independent performing arts in the coming years and decades. These transformations should be actively shaped and not passively suffered through – this means change by design and not by disaster. The time period for pro-active action is increasingly closing. What contributions do the independent performing arts need to make so that the effects of climate change remain controllable? How do they also need to reform themselves, above all in their methods of production, in order to keep their percentage of processes of climate warming and environmental destruction as minimal as possible? What role can they play in inventing fundamentally alternative forms of production and care activity that have an effect as models on other fields of the societal economy as well?
The partial study highlights the interactions between anthropogenic climate warming and related ecological problems on the one hand, and the production methods of the independent performing arts on the other, all subsumed under the term of sustainability in two main parts. The first of these parts discusses, under the guiding principle of infrastructure, primarily institutional fields of action such as operational ecology, climate accounting and strategic sustainability management, sustainable buildings, material infrastructures and circular economy as well as sustainable production. The second part focuses, under the guiding principle of mobility, on the relationship between travel, support policies and precarious existence and working methods, on financial and organizational conditions of choosing means of transport, the justice of mobility as well as the problem of an ecological sustainable guest performance and touring business. In the process, the partial study critically evaluates existing initiatives, measures and specifications, tests its potential as a model, determines needs and support possibilities and formulates goals for sustainable production. Results from climate research as well as an intersectional understanding of ecological sustainability in the sense of climate justice that is applied to production relationships in the independent performing arts serve as a foundation.
The field of sustainability is broad and heterogeneous. The associated measures create a bundle of highly specific interventions and transformations in all business activity; from the artistic and curatorial work to the administration, the crafts, building management all the way to the audience. Since the field’s institutions and organizations participate in some of the environmentally central branches such as the transport and energy sector or the building, material and garbage business, not all of the financing for these measures can be taken from cultural funding. The environment and economy departments are just as much in demand here as, for example, CO2 pricing revenues. Due to its societal draw, the field of the independent performing arts is an excellent place for the comprehensive establishment of a culture of sustainability from these funds.
Involved
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Dr. Maximilian Haas
University of the Arts Berlin
© Elise Von BernstorffDr. Maximilian Haas
University of the Arts BerlinMaximilian Haas is a theater/media scholar and dramaturg living in Berlin. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the DFG Research Training Group "The Knowledge of the Arts" at the Berlin University of the Arts. Haas studied applied theater studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and received his doctorate from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne with a practice-based dissertation on "Animals on Stage: An Aesthetic Ecology of Performance." His scholarly research includes the theory and practice of dramaturgy in contemporary dance and theater, the aesthetics of performative arts, the methodology and epistemology of artistic research, science and animal studies, and ecocritical discourses. The current project deals with aesthetic knowledge and artistic action in the new climate regime from a performancetheoretical perspective. Haas was engaged at the Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz Berlin and the Berliner Festspiele and collaborated dramaturgically with artists such as Hannah Hurtzig (Mobile Academy Berlin), Lucie Tuma, Martin Nachbar and Jeremy Wade. Since 2018, he has curated the discourse series "Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence" with Margarita Tsomou at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.
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Prof. Dr. Sandra Umathum
Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin
© privatProf. Dr. Sandra Umathum
Inter-University Center for Dance BerlinSandra Umathum is a theater and performance scholar, dramaturg and since 2020 professor for (applied) theory dance, choreography, performance at the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin (HZT). From 2010 to 2012 she was visiting professor for dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig and from 2013 to 2018 professor for theater studies and dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch in Berlin. She received her PhD with "Art as Performance Experience," a study on intersubjective experiences in exhibition art (transcript 2011) and is co-editor of "Disabled Theater" (diaphanes 2015) or "Postdramaturgies" (Neofelis 2020), among others. Her research interests include theory and practice of contemporary theater and performance, relations of performing and visual arts since the 1950s, performance & disability, performance and/as documentation, shooting (with a gun and with a camera), and new forms and practices of dramaturgy. In 2018, as part of Impulse Theater Festival, she curated "Academy of the Precarious #2: Unsafe Encounters" (studiobühne Cologne). She was also co-curator of "Dirty Debut," a series of events supporting young performance artists* (Sophiensaele Berlin, 2018/19; Ballhaus Ost, 2020).