COAL Prize 2018

Autogena & Portway, Uranium Ore, Kvanefjeld
Autogena & Portway, Uranium Ore, Kvanefjeld

Lise Autogena, Joshua Portway and Ele Carpenter have been shortlisted for the COAL Prize 2018.
Museum of Hunting and Nature
62 rue des Archives
75003 Paris

For generations small-scale farming near Kvanefjeld has been Greenland’s only agricultural industry - an extraordinary cultural landscape with UNESCO World Heritage status. This is also a unique geological site representing one of the richest rare earth mineral and uranium ore deposits in the world. An Australian/Chinese owned mining corporation is in the process of being granted an open pit mining license and this has come to symbolise a pivotal moment for Greenland. Sustainable plans for the future may be compromised by short-term financial gains, and investments from foreign mining may not only have a radical impact on the country’s economic infrastructure, but may also dramatically transform the social and cultural fabric and entire sense of identity in Greenland.

In collaboration with the local community and scientists at The European Commission’s Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (JRC), Autogena, Portaway and will establish initiatives for long-term engagements between artists, scientists and the Kvanefjeld community and research possibilities for a background radiation monitoring station to supply data to the European Union’s radiation monitoring system. We will train sheep farmers, hunters, fishermen and residents in monitoring radiation in their environment using mobile monitors that map data in real time, and work with scientists to analyze, visualize and map the crowd sourced data and identify new data sets and case studies. The final artwork will map relationships between nuclear materials and communities within the landscape and build on the relationships between the community, emerging self-governance and radiological awareness. We hope this can be a starting point for new ways of thinking about formal and informal data collection within a specific geo-political context.

The Awards Ceremony of the 2018 COAL Prize will be held on October 24, 2018, at the Hunting and Nature Museum, in the presence of the finalists and personalities from the fields of Art and Ecology. The ceremony will be preceded by a panel discussion organized in partnership with the Ministry of Culture on the topic ‘Ten Years of Art and Ecology’ and followed the intervention of artists Lucy + Jorge Orta. This will take place alongside the exhibition Tierra del Fuego by Angelika Markul, winner of the 2016 COAL Prize, which is on until 2 December. This event is organized on the occasion of COAL’s tenth anniversary. http://www.projetcoal.org/coal/en/2018/10/05/les-nomin%C3%A9s-de-prix-co...

PROGRAM – 24 October
16h30: Panel discussion ‘Ten Years of Art and Ecology’ reviewing the evolution within art and ecology in the past ten years with Nathalie Blanc, Ewen Chardronnet, Thierry Boutonnier et David Lescot. Mediated by Raphaël Abrille.
18h00: Award Ceremony of the 2018 COAL Prize
From 18:00: Antarctica World Passport. Lucy + Jorge Orta will reactivate the Antarctic passport distribution office in the museum’s exhibition halls, where the exhibition Tierra del Fuego, by Angelika Markul, laureate of the 2016 COAL Prize is on until December 2, 2018.

This evening is part of the series of nocturnes on climate change and the melting of the ice caps presented by COAL at the Museum of Hunting and Nature.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
This event is free. Reservation obligatory at contact@projetcoal.fr