Climate Propagandas Congregation

At this critical moment, during a time entwined along the nexus of genocide and ecocide, BAK and artist Jonas Staal convene Climate Propagandas Congregation, a two-day gathering with cultural workers, theorists, activists, and organizers to collectively imagine and propagate forms of meaningful collective survival in—and in spite of—the present extinction wars. The congregation brings together research models, ideas, and tools for deliberation in an immersive diorama: a large-scale installation, embodying an ecosystem of collectivity and collaboration that exists across time in collectivist imaginaries and practices of life.

With contributions by: Radha D’Souza; TJ Demos; Urok Shirhan; Nilüfer Koç (Kurdistan National Congress); Sven Lütticken; Jay Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux (Laboratory for Insurrectionary Imagination); Serda Demir and Iliada Charalambous (True Counterpower) with the Sudanese Refugee Collective, Colored Qollective, Woonopstand, and XR Justice Now; Varsha Gandikota (Progressive International); Paul Goodwin; Jodi Dean; Andrew Curley; Steve Lyons (Not An Alternative); Julie de Lima (National Democratic Front of the Philippines); Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei; Chris Keulemans; Alexandra Martens Serrano; Clara Balaguer; and Jeanne van Heeswijk a.o.

In 1622, the Vatican founded the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide), to propagate the Catholic faith facing the rise of Protestantism in Europe. This constituted the first known propaganda department in history. Now, four hundred years later, we gather a new two-day congregation to study climate propaganda to propagate alternative presents and futures: the Climate Propaganda Congregation at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Climate Propagandas Congregation takes place in a large-scale installation, best described as an “immersive diorama.” The diorama depicts biota of the geological era known as the Ediacaran (635 million years to 541 million years ago), which was a unique non-predatory cooperative ecology consisting of beings that were neither plants nor animals. This “pre-socialist socialist ecology,” in the words of geologist Mark McMenamin, teaches that complex life on earth propagates from a history of fundamental collectivity, not Darwinist competition. In the installation, Ediacaran biota are combined with the faces of historical revolutionaries: the ancestors from whom contemporary radical egalitarian imaginaries have been inherited.

The first day of the gathering looks into different climate propagandas that serve liberal, libertarian, conspiracist, and eco-fascistic interests, and which propagate extinction for the many and profits for the few. On the second day, the congregation focuses on transformative propagandas across socialist, Black, feminist, queer, Indigenous, and internationalist struggles, which propagate the need to change with the climate: to recognize the necessity of dismantling predatory and extractivist systems and of asserting a transformative politics of radical equality, repair, and regeneration.

Climate Propagandas Congregation is based on Jonas Staal’s book Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration published by The MIT Press in 2024 in partnership with BAK. The congregation also serves as the concluding event of BAK’s 25 years of practice in its current institutional form. Following the defunding by both the local and national governments in Utrecht and the Netherlands, from January 2025 onwards, BAK will embark on search for new organizational modalities with the series “Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries: Building Cultural Infrastructure Anew”, convened with multitude collaborators by artist and BAK’s artistic director Jeanne van Heeswijk.