“Hope at the coalface — can this coal town thrive in a post-Carbon future?”
… featured on Radio National’s Big Ideas on 3 July – and is available as a podcast now!
On Thursday 27 June Natasha Mitchell from ABC Radio National hosted this excellent panel inspired by the LiddellWORKS exhibition, at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, before an audience of 55 interested locals.
Join ecological concept-creator Dr Glenn Albrecht, futures anthropologist and community mapper Dr Hedda Askland, LiddellWORKS Residency artist and “ratbag” Fiona Lee and AGL’s Rob Cooper for this engrossing one-hour discussion.
You can listen to the show at any time on the ABC Listen app and via your podcast provider.
Listen in – it’s all our futures that they are discussing.
Dr Glenn Albrecht over the last 20 years has developed the theme of negative and positive emotional states connected to the state of the Earth. He is a ‘farmosopher’ whose new concepts have been taken up by academics and artists. While he is best known for creating the concept of solastalgia, or the lived experience of negative environmental change, his most recent work develops the mega-meme of the ‘Symbiocene’, a future state where humans re-integrate with the rest of nature. His concepts and books, such as Earth Emotions, have given him a unique place in debates on our future.
Dr Hedda Askland is an Associate Professor in Anthropology at The University of Newcastle. She is a futures anthropologist, engaging in critical conversations and theories of how to build a sustainable and just future. She is leading two projects in the Hunter exploring pathways of collaboration and engagement within communities in transition. My Muswellbrook: Place Identity and Pride in Place uses “thick mapping” to understand local residents’ connections to place and future dreams. Mining voids and just transition uses arts-based methods to interrogate the social and affective dimensions of mining voids and discover how these landscapes can help shape a just transition.
Fiona Lee is one of the 16 LiddellWORKS Residency artists. She’s a multi-disciplinary artist and climate justice activist working across non-violent direct action, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. After losing her home to bushfires in November 2019, Fiona Lee undertook a 12-month Bushfire Affected Artist residency at The Creator Incubator in Newcastle. It was there that she shaped unapologetically provocative works from her home’s scorched remnants that spoke to both her personal loss and the impact of climate change on us all. From this, she had a touring solo exhibition titled Carbon Tax, with works made from her home’s scorched remnants. Her LiddellWORKS piece creates new “machines” from new castings from casting moulds from the Power Station.
Rob Cooper is the Community Programs Manager at Liddell. With a background in teaching and music, he moved into the energy industry at Liddell and neighbouring Bayswater Power Stations almost 20 years ago. At the time it was owned by the State Government, before being sold to AGL in 2014. Rob has worked with colleagues, the local community, and others with a shared stake in navigating the journey towards Liddell’s closure, redevelopment of the site, and planning for new energy projects.
Image : Natasha Mitchell, Glenn Albrecht, Rob Cooper, John O’Brien, Fiona Lee, Hedda Askland in front of the mural created for the LiddellWORKS program by Jakeob Watson and others. Below: the panel in front of Will Maguire’s work for LiddellWORKS. Photo Marina Lee Warner
