Communicating climate change through the lens of art and science transdisciplinarity

We present Arboreal Futures, a transdisciplinary exhibition project at the boundary between climate research and art, with the overarching goal  of communicating about climate change with the general public. Through the example of this exhibition project, we explore the role of art in science and vice versa, along with the positive outcomes that can arise from working at the nexus of these fields.

Art, through its influence on the sensory experience of large audiences, plays a significant role in shaping the collective imaginary and the public discourse. Artists are increasingly considered as agents of importance in communicating science to broader audiences. There are mainly three different ways to envision art and science collaboration, namely 1) art to illustrate and translate science, 2) art as inspired by science for its artistic expression, and 3) transdisciplinary cooperation between art and science to ask questions, design experiments, and formulate knowledge.

The transdisciplinary approach is of particular interest in the context of climate change, since addressing climate change as a society requires building up bridges between - and making interact - various forms of knowledge, including scientific as well as non-scientific forms, that tend to evolve in separate contexts.

We organized two artist-in-residences at the Plant Ecology Research Laboratory (PERL), EPFL in summer 2023. The artists stayed at the lab for two and four weeks, respectively, and worked in interaction with the researchers in their research projects, helped them, and accompanied them in field research experiments. We selected the two participating artists, Maja Renn and Krzysztof Wronski, through an international call for artists.

As outcomes of the residences, the artists initiated new works and pursued them further for over a year after their residence at PERL. Maja Renn developed a series of performative works translating the phenomenon of phenoplasticity she discovered at the lab into choreographic forms. Krzysztof Wronski developed a new series of artistically driven interventions that reflect on the current and emerging needs of trees and forests and question the role technology and human management should play in light of them.

An exhibition presenting the completed art works together with PERL’s research took place at the Pavilion on the EPFL campus from November 2024 to January 2025.

In this talk, we will discuss the broader context of this project, the artists and the researchers’ experiences, and the outcomes with a glimpse at the Arboreal Futures exhibition.