Performing Arts 2022: Museum-Carbon-Project

The MMCA Performing Arts 2022: Museum-Carbon-Project is a reflective program in the form of a series of multidisciplinary events, all of which question how we should respond to climate change in the Anthropocene. Until now, we have only evaluated an exhibition based on its aesthetic achievements, its impact on the ecology of art, the number of visitors, and the level of visitors’ satisfaction. We have neglected the environmental effects created in the course of putting together an exhibition. Climate change caused by greenhouse gasses looms as an ever-growing problem all across the world, meaning we can no longer overlook the environmental consequences of creating an exhibition. Given this reality, what are the perspectives and attitudes we must adopt to face this problem? What must our judgment criteria entail and how can we transform our concerns into discourse?

Issues of climate change or carbon emissions are by no means a simple problem that can be easily solved. Although the Anthropocene, climate change, and carbon emissions are real phenomena that we can no longer ignore, they are also “hyperobjects” that are too large and convoluted to be grasped as a whole; they are, in essence, parts of a complex problem that concern the entire human race. That is why the MMCA Performing Arts 2022: Museum-Carbon-Project does not simply aim to reduce the quantitative amount of carbon emissions at the museum. Rather, this project suggests we see climate change and carbon emission as a process of addressing problems about the human community and expanding the ways we sense the present time.

As a start, the MMCA Performing Arts 2022: Museum-Carbon-Project calculates the amount of carbon emitted at every step of creating an exhibition at the MMCA. A wide range of “Projects”* in the form of presentations, discussions, and workshops have been developed, each dealing with different activities involved in exhibition-making. Meanwhile, “Discussions”** will take place forming an arena where people from different disciplines can come together to share their concerns. The MMCA Performing Arts 2022: Museum-Carbon-Project will not act as a vehicle to generate schematic outcomes, but instead be used as an arena of contemplation that questions and examines what role museums should play in the Anthropocene, while also serving as a preliminary preparation for sustainable exhibition-making in the future.

*From August 19 to October 30, 2022 a wide range of “Projects” will be carried out, each derived and developed from different activities involved in exhibition-making, including the production of artworks, employee commuting and business trips, packaging and transportation of artworks, construction of exhibition spaces, production of PR materials, energy use in exhibition spaces, transportation of visitors, and the disposal of exhibition waste.

**The “Discussions” related to the exhibition-making activities will be consistently updated on the project website. For instance, materials such as the current status of MMCA, existing guidelines, issues, and proposals will be put together and shared on the website, as well as through a separate sourcebook.

Projects
–A Discussion on Carbon Emissions at Contemporary Art Museums
–A Workshop and Discussion on Materials for Sustainable Art Practices, “Future Materials Encounters”
–A Discussion on Environmental Impact of Art Materials
–A Workshop on Museum-Passivhaus
–A Discussion on the Clothing Design Process and Sustainability
–A Carbon-Neutral MMCA as Imagined by Citizens
–Is Sustainable Exhibition Design Possible?
–A Qualitative Study by Stakeholders on the Construction, Transportation, and Installation of an Exhibition
–A Discussion on Museums and Climate Change
–A Humanistic Study on Carbon as an Object: The Issue of Climate Change and Carbon as Another Epistemology
–ESG at Museums