Turning up the Heat?
How do cultural identities shape our experience of the climate emergency?
Climate change disrupts food systems by creating fires, floods and droughts which spoil harvests, increase prices and create food scarcity. Across the world, these impacts are felt disproportionately by people of the global majority and lower income communities.
Working in collaboration with artist Angela YT Chan and printmaker Jo Brinton, King’s College London students made riso prints exploring the injustices of our global food systems, and the long journeys food products make from producer to consumer. Their contributions are rooted in personal connections to Vietnam, Pakistan and the Caribbean Diaspora.
On one side, each shows part of a global map image which is created when the three individual prints are positioned as a group. On the reverse, they reflect the research each student has conducted into a global food product; spanning bottled water, sugar and coffee.
Angela YT Chan is an independent researcher, data engineer and artist specialising in climate change. Her multidisciplinary work examines power in relation to inequity throughout the colonial and ongoing history of the climate crisis. She investigates authoritative climate communications and public perceptions in the timeline of unfolding social changes and works to accentuate justice through counternarratives explored with videos, illustrations, writing, narrative games, workshops, creative coding and extensive collaborations in arts, technology and activism.
As an educator, Chan teaches at universities in climate colonialism, environmental and social justice in art practices, critical research, games and speculative fiction, and mentors artists working on digital media technologies. As a research consultant, she has worked in international climate and cultural policy and on climate and sustainability projects for major cultural institutions.
Jo Brinton (b. Southampton 1978, lives & works in London) is interested in how publications and print can enable and extend the reach of conversation. Brinton has a social practice and is the founder of Good Studio, a risograph print project that promotes conversation and exchange. The printer acts as an activator and device to record and produce material as part of research-based projects.
Alongside collaborating with artists, makers and community groups on print projects in their Brixton based studio, Good Studio supports community printing in public spaces via risograph residencies. Good Studio’s RZ 370EP printer has travelled to: Photofusion, Southwark Park Galleries, Freelands Foundation, Science Gallery London and will be at The Feminist Library later this year.