Back to Earth

A Serpentine project, curated and produced by curated and produced by Eva Speight, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Holly Shuttleworth, Jo Paton, Kostas Stasinopoulos, Lucia Pietroiusti, Rebecca Lewin and Sarah Hamed
Long-term project: 2019-ongoing (website →)
Exhibition: 22 June - 18 September 2022 (website →)
Serpentine Podcast: Back to Earth →

Seba Calfuqueo, Tray Tray Ko, video, 6’13, 2022 (still). Photo: Sebastian Melo

Back to Earth is Serpentine’s long-term, interdisciplinary, artistic programme responding to the urgent climate crisis. Back to Earth is about change and it is a catalyst to change our approach to the climate emergency.

This multi-year project invites over sixty leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers, and designers to shape their responses to environmental change with the support of Serpentine’s partner organisations and networks.

Back to Earth, the long-term project: initiatives/podcasts/artists/campaigns here
Back to Earth, the exhibition (22 June-18 September 2022) artists: Agnes Denes, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Brian Eno, Carolina Caycedo, Cooking Sections, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Katy'taya Catitu Tayassu, Formafantasma, Giles Round, Karrabing Film Collective, Sissel Tolaas, Superflux and Studio Ghazaal Vojdani, Tabita Rezaire/AMAKABA and Yussef Agbo-Ola/OLANIYI STUDIO. Posters by Adham Faramawy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Asad Raza, Ben Frost, Black Quantum Futurism, Bones Tan Jones, Cooking Sections, David Adjaye, Es Devlin, Etel Adnan, Gabriela Hearst, Himali Singh Soin, Hyphen-Labs X Allison Akootchook Warden, Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe, James Bridle, Kate Raworth and Ruurd Priester, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Koo Jeong-A, London Fieldworks and Gustav Metzger, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Manthia Diawara, Marina Abramović, Martino Gamper, Newton Harrison, Parag Khanna, Pedro Reyes, Radha D'Souza and Jonas Staal, Raymond Pettibon, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Seba Calfuqueo, Torkwase Dyson.
Back to Earth LIVE (summer 2022) includes Equilibrium: A public gathering on environmental justice (9 July 2022, Serpentine Pavilion). Info here →

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. How can art respond to the climate emergency? How can society collectively self-transform? How can an arts institution contribute to discourse around the climate crisis in a meaningful way?

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. How are artists developing campaigns for the Earth? How can an artwork reconnect us with the environment? Can we "feel" the speed of climate change, or hear the sounds of a seed?

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. In Episode 3, hosts Victoria Sin & Lucia Pietroiusti dive into one of the core ecological principles of Back to Earth: we are all interconnected, smaller pieces of a larger whole.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. How can botanical knowledge support practices of ecological and personal healing? In episode 4: By Leaves We Listen, hosts Victoria Sin and Lucia Pietroiusti are joined by Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. What does design look like when it begins from a position of ecological responsibility? What does designing with and for the non-human mean? Host Victoria Sin is joined by Rebecca Lewin, Curator of Exhibitions and Design, together they dive into everything from eco-design led exhibition making, to asking questions about the future of design education and ecological practices.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. How are artists using technologies to imagine alternate realities, new alien languages and manipulate time? How can artists make the invisible visible? Systems and Sprouts is a new episode with host Victoria Sin and guest host Victoria Ivanova, who works with the Arts Technologies team at the Serpentine on creative research and development.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. Indigenous rights, care of biodiversity, and ecological, multispecies worldviews are inextricably connected. Today's episode features perspectives from self-organised Indigenous organisations at the front line of extraction and climate change, as well as artists researching our more-than-human entanglements.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. What is queer ecology? How do queer theory and artistic practice inform environmental activism and climate justice? How can we think decolonisation and queerness together? Victoria Sin welcomes guest host Serpentine Assistant Curator, Kostas Stasinopoulos to dive into transformation, queerness, the natural and unnatural, wild, decolonial and submerged perspectives.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. Back to Earth: Can I Get Back To You? The concluding episode of this podcast season examines the past, present and future of the Back to Earth project, which invites artists to respond to climate emergency.