co2 logbook

SALT. CLAY. ROCK. has received part of its funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation's Zero Fund program. By accepting the grant, we have agreed to participate in the foundation’s exploration of how to produce climate neutral cultural productions, as well as practices of environmental sustainability and climate-friendly alternatives to cultural production.

In accepting this grant, nGbK as an institution and our project must research and orient towards a climate-neutral production. We are working  with the help of Elie Preuvel, nGbK’s newly appointed climate commissioner. Each year a CO2 balance is calculated for our project, and is then accounted for by an independent accounting firm, supplied by the German Cultural Foundation. In total we are allowed to offset about 1000 euros of carbon emissions, which is about 600 kg CO2eq.

“With the application-based “Zero Fund”, the Federal Cultural Foundation helps cultural institutions develop climate-neutral production forms, explore new aesthetics with as minimal an impact on the climate as possible. By promoting the development and implementation of artistically innovative and climate-neutral art and cultural projects in 2023-2024, the Foundation hopes to sensitize cultural institutions and artists to the possibilities of environmentally sustainable production methods, and so doing, advance measures which actively protect our climate. The aim is to develop a model that encourages the German cultural sector to reduce greenhouse gasses in the long term.”’’ (from the Zero Fund webpage)

As part of the funding we have also committed to prepare a guideline for climate neutral production on the basis of our experiences at the end of the project. Here we collect our thoughts and reflection on the way.

Below are several discussions around climate neutrality, and thoughts and questions the climate-neutral process inspired along the way. 

Following that is a logbook of the decisions we made in our efforts to produce our two-year transnational curatorial and artistic research project with site-based productions in rural areas in Hungary and Germany and a final exhibition in Berlin.

Conducting a multi-year transnational curatorial and artistic research project with an aim to maintain climate neutrality, we encountered a variety of practical and conceptual challenges that we discuss below. 

We anticipated that mobility and the transnational nature of the project would be a challenge, and thus dreamt of a slower pace of production and research. We are excited to see any aesthetic responses by the artists to the CO2 challenge; in terms of formats, media and materials, and how climate-neutrality might conceptually connect to our focus on (nuclear) energy futures.

We suspected that there would be many purely administrative aspects of the project, yet were nevertheless unprepared for the practical concerns and conceptual twists that arose in the production and accounting process. 

For instance In rural areas:
-It was nearly impossible to find green certified climate-neutral accommodations even though a few questions might show that the may actually have very CO2 emissions. 

-In June 2023, we encountered poor e-cars infrastructure in our trips throughout Germany. Our search for charging stations impacted our schedule, eating habits, gathering and collective possibilities. In Hungary traveling with e-car on the countryside was altogether unimaginable. 

Below are more in-depth discussions of the challenges we had in order to conduct our complicated project in a climate neutral way, and of the conceptual issues we have with accounting methods.

May 14, 2023 / Germany Curatorial Research Trip / Wolfsburg Germany
Searched online for an electric auto charging station

November 1, 2023 / Artistic Research / Moresleben Germany
In order to cut down on hotel co2 emisions, and because there were no Green Hotels, we camped.

December 14, 2023 / Germany Curatorial Research Trip / Wolfsburg Germany
Searched online for an electric auto charging station

January 26 2023 / Artistic Research / Moresleben Germany
In order to cut down on hotel co2 emisions, and because there were no Green Hotels, we camped.