CoastARTS
CoastARTS: Coastlines as Zones of Ecocultural Crisis - Shaping Resilience through Transnational Performance-based Arts
CoastARTS International
CoastARTS is a comparative, multi-sited study proceeding in three broad phases (research and creative design, community-based practice, reflection and analysis), each lasting a year. It will produce new research, notably a book on how performing arts methods can be deployed in other disciplines. With cultural partners, we will also co-create performances, exhibitions and sustainable digital resources that will be accessible to all. The work will unfold collaboratively in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Norway and the UK, serving as both an analytical window into coastal crises and a mode of collaborative action.
CoastARTS Norway
The NTNU team, led by Heli Aaltonen, will approach the theme of eco-cultural crisis through site-specific practice-led research on Norway’s Atlantic West coast with community partners. According to the Norwegian seabird monitoring program SEAPOP, along the Norwegian coastal area, bird populations have been decimated 70 % during 60 years from 1950 – 2010 by the combined effects of industrial salmon farming, oil and wind energy production, destruction of living areas, tourism, climate change and avian influenza. Drawing broadly on posthuman and new materialist perspectives, the Norwegian CoastARTS project explores human–avian intra-actions in the context of environmental changes and in relation to ecocultural identity.
Environmental arts scholar, postdoc researcher Pauliina Maapalo together with Aaltonen is co-designing the research framework and conducting case studies with coastal communities in Trondheim, Nesna and Sandnessjøen/Herøy in collaboration with teachers, culture workers, independent artists and avian specialists (e.g. ornithologists). The aim is to shape resilience and empower coastal human communities to care about and sustain their more-than-human world by exploring ways of creating performative actions for the benefit of the seabirds.
The associate partners, Trondheim International School (ThIS), Rotvoll Steiner School, Fyret (a theatre workshop for young people), Herøy museum, Theatre Zahl and Nesna Kindergarten, have agreed to co-operate with performative case studies.
The artists taking part in the project in Norway: Matilda Aaltonen, Georgiana Keable, Kari Heimen, Mari Mäkiö, Annalise Best and Mark Trapani
The avian experts taking part in the project in Norway: Martin Eggen, Audun Eriksen and Atle Ivar Olsen.
