Art-based affective pedagogy as part of the Rights of Nature movement. Presencing ecohabitat, unlearning extractive overview effect

Speaker: Martin Hultman, University of Gothenburg

Central to the six-year research program exploring Rights of Nature for water bodies, funded by Formas, we arrange Transition Labs (known as 'Vätternting') with committed and concerned groups of people who live and work with Lake Vättern. At our meetings, we use a textile representation of the elongated, sea-like Lake Vättern, which is passed gently around the participants standing in a wide circle marked with stones from one of the lake’s shores. The aim of this presencing ceremony, including the art-I-fact, is to create a shared, solemn experience and to invite participants to engage in a very concrete process of unlearning the extractivist overview effect. In this seminar, some preliminary thoughts on this pedagogy will be discussed based on a work-in-progress paper, which will later be published in a Special Issue of the journal Lagoonscapes. 

Professor Martin Hultman, University of Gothenburg, leads a multi-year research program called "Whose Body of Water?" that explores how Lake Vättern could be recognised in its own rights. Hultman is widely published in research areas such as climate and energy, particularly regarding gender. He has been named the most influential researcher in Gothenburg, the Linköping University alumnus of the year and a finalist for the Book Fair's Education Prize.