Nora Bateson [Filmmaker, Writer, Educator, Lecturer, President of the International Bateson Institute – Sweden & USA]
Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?”. An international lecturer, researcher and writer, Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson.
Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström [Artists Studio Bigert & Bergström – Sweden]
Bigert & Bergström is a Stockholm-based artist duo. Their creative partnership first began in 1986, and have since become internationally recognized for a wide range of conceptually and technically complex art projects. Through their career, Bigert & Bergström have produced and created art projects ranging from large-scale sculptures and installations to performance and film. Often with a conceptual edge, the core of their work is placed right in the junction between humanity, nature and technology. With energetic curiosity and often using humor as a tool, the duo is known to analyze scientific and social issues discussed in contemporary society, such as climate change or environmental sustainability.
Jan van Boeckel [Artist-educator, Researcher and Film-maker – The Netherlands]
Jan van Boeckel is an artist and art educator who has worked for many years on the intersections of art, education and ecology. He was professor in art pedagogy at Estonian Academy of Arts from 2015 until 2018. Before he was a teacher at the Iceland University of the Arts and other places. In academic year 2018-2019 Jan worked as senior lecturer in art education at the University of Gothenburg and as visiting lecturer and teacher on the themes of art, sustainability and climate leadership at CEMUS) in Uppsala, also in Sweden.
Alexander Crawford [Educator and Consultant – Sweden]
Alexander Crawford is a Stockholm-based educator and analyst, working as independent consultant and learning process designer. He works in global projects that explore interdependencies and complexity, in Sweden, Europe and China. For over ten years, he was research director and project director at the Tällberg Foundation, where he was lead program designer and project leader for the yearly global multi-stakeholder and cross-disciplinary Tällberg Forum (2005-2013). He is also an experienced analyst of economic, social and political trends, exploring the causes and consequences of global developments. Alexander is also involved in several non-profits and start-ups.
His session Listening to (outer and inner) nature at 7.45 on Saturday May 16 will feature an early morning nature walk with dialogue exercizes and reflection.
Åsa Elmstam [Artist – Sweden]
Åsa Elmstam, is an artist and a climate activist. She works with visualizing the climate crises and our over-consumption in exhibition form since 2007. Her background is a blend of silversmithing, jewelery art (Konstfack – Ädellab), art, crafts and studies In sustainable development in design (Sustanible Projects – University Tokyo Zokei, in Japan) etc. She is based at Södermalm in Stockholm.
Keri Facer [Visiting Professor in Climate Change Leadership Uppsala University and Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol – UK & Sweden]
Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, School of Education. She works on rethinking the relationship between formal educational institutions and wider society and is particularly concerned with the sorts of knowledge that may be needed to address contemporary environmental, economic, social, and technological changes.
Jonas Gren [Poet, Journalist, Scholar and Editor 10-TAL – Sweden]
Jonas Gren lives in Stockholm. Author of four books of poetry in Swedish (partly translated to English): Dälden, där de blommar (2018), Antropocen [Anthropocene] (2016), Överallt ska jag vara i centrum [Everywhere I shall be in the centre] (2015), and Lantmäteriet [Land Survey] (2014). Jonas is a journalist at Klimatmagasinet Effekt, a Swedish magazine on climate change and society, writes in Dagens nyheter, and has a Master from Stockholm Resilience Center, with focus on narratives in the Anthropocene.
Anita Goldman [Journalist and Author – Sweden]
Anita Goldman is a well known Swedish writer of cultural criticism to some of the major Swedish daily newspapers. Her writing focuses on a critical investigation into some of Western cultures basic premises: whether it concerns the use and abuse of Nature (as in the case of the atomic bomb), the ostracism of the female voice in cultural history and the fear of female bodies and desires or the materialistic focus that precludes a spiritual knowledge and awe in relating to the world. Anita Goldman is an ardent vegetable gardener in her house in southern Sweden, where she also leads writing workshops.
Dougald Hine [Writer, Teacher and Culturemaker a school called HOME, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project – Sweden & UK]
Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer and creator of a series of projects and organisations. From 2009 to 2019, he was a director of the Dark Mountain Project, which he co-founded with Paul Kingsnorth. He is currently writing Notes From Underground, a weekly essay series on the context of the new climate movements for Bella Caledonia, where he is a commissioning editor. Originally from England, he now lives in Sweden.
dougald.nu, aschoolcalledhome.org and dark-mountain.net/author/dougald-hine
Mikael Kurkiala [Author and Researcher, the Swedish Church, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University – Sweden]
Mikael Kurkiala is associate professor of Cultural anthropology at Uppsala University and researcher at the Church Office. He is the author of, among other titles, In every drum beat the earth’s pulse: the fear of differences of our times (Ordfront 2005) and When the Soul Goes into Exile: Modernity, Technology & the Sacred (Verbum 2019). He has also participated in several anthologies about the place of existential issues in contemporary society.
Martin Modéus [Bishop of the Diocese of Linköping, Church of Sweden and Theologian – Sweden]
Martin Modéus (born 1962) is a Swedish theologian and bishop of the Diocese of Linköping in the evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden.
Since many years, the Diocese has worked very actively for the environment and for sustainability which has resulted in a climate strategy with highly set goals. In the autumn of 2019, the bishops of the Church of Sweden jointly published an open letter, A Bishops’ Letter About the Climate, a piece of writing that highlights the spiritual and existential challenges – and possibilities – inherent in the climate crisis.
Texter och föredrag som biskop Martin Modéus skrivit
Mattias Olsson [Filmmaker and Founder of Campfire Stories – Sweden]
Filmmaker Mattias Olsson is the founder of Campfire Stories, which is a film platform that aims to inspire change towards a future of ecological balance and human sanity. His background is that of a still photographer, which was his profession during the 13 years he lived in New York. Since he moved back to Sweden in 2007 he’s produced five films for Swedish television (SVT) and 14 films for Campfire Stories. He’s also a podcast producer and a lecturer. And an enthusiastic hobby-farmer, with a particular love for growing tomatoes and chilies.
Paul Pulé [Environment Activist, Scholar and Social Entrepreneur]
Dr. Paul Pulé dedicates his life to transforming traditional notions of masculinities to include broader, deeper and wider care. He is an Australian gender and environment activist, scholar and social entrepreneur specialising in men’s lives and their impacts on planet, people and self.
In 2013, Paul completed a Ph.D. that studied men’s capacities to care. After receiving his doctorate, Paul founded MenAlive Australia, a consultancy that provides research, workshops, seminars, public talks and keynotes, about men and masculinities, as well as profeminist mentoring for boys and men. In addition to being a masculinities life coach and mentor, Paul also provides organisational support about masculinities issues in the workplace and consults on policy reform to create gender equity and environmental justice.
Adam Sébire [Filmmaker, Artist and Researcher]
Adam Sébire studied documentary filmmaking at the national film schools of Australia & Cuba, going on to make programs for Australian TV. His experiences filming on the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu attuned his work to climate change in 2003. But how to approach its spatiotemporal dimensions via documentary moving images? In a society where “seeing is believing” the climate crisis presents particular problems for visual representation. Adam’s PhD in media art approaches these challenges via multi-channel ‘video polyptychs’.
In March Adam held a solo exhibition at Gallery Svalbard, while the sea-ice artwork he discussed at the last Climate Existence, now completed, will join the permanent exhibition of La Biosphère in Montréal later this year.
Pella Thiel [Educator and Activist – Sweden]
Pella Thiel is a maverick ecologist and activist who works with relational, systemic activism, change processes and leadership för a society in harmony with nature. She is a co-founder of the Swedish Transition Network, End Ecocide Sweden, Save the Rainforest Sweden and the swedish Network for Rights of Nature. She also teaches ecopsychology and is a part of the eco-psychology/art/activist NGO Lodyn. Pella coordinated the first three Rights of Nature Conferences in Sweden, is a part of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative and advisory board of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Pella has an MSc in Ecology from Stockholm University with the thesis on rainforest restoration in Ecuador. She enjoys pigs, having her hands in the soil at the smallholding in the archipelago of Stockholm where she lives, whisky and playing with people who truly love what they are doing.
Mirimari Väyrynen [Visual Artist – Finland]
Mirimari Väyrynen is a visual artist based in Helsinki. In her paintings and installations, she investigates themes of ecology through motifs of landscape. Väyrynen is interested in contemporary landscape as a process, as an embodiment of cultural and societal values, yet subordinate to globalisation, pollution and technology. She has recently exhibited individually in Blanca Soto Gallery in Madrid as well as Gallery Forum Box and Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki. Besides her works have been shown in group exhibitions e.g. in Kunstahal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Kunsthalle Helsinki, CentroCentro, Madrid and in Contemporary Art Museums of Málaga and A Coruña, Spain.
May-Britt Öhman [Researcher Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, CEMFOR, Uppsala University – Sweden]
May-Britt Öhman is PhD, researcher and project leader of “Dálkke: Indigenous Climate Change Studies”, at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, CEMFOR, Uppsala University, guest researcher at History, Luleå University of Technology, and leader of the Sámeednama friddja universitehta– Sámi Land Free University – initiative.
May-Britt Öhman is PhD in History of Technology, 2007, and Lule/Forest Sámi from Lule River/Julevädno, with ancestry also from the Torne river valley on the colonial border between Sweden and Finland.