The podcast series Creators facing the Climate Emergency provides a platform of conversations between artists, thinkers and scientists to create new narratives, to raise awareness and to incite action in the face of the climate change with artists as mediators.
The artist Noémie Sauve and the volcanologist Benjamin van Wyk de Vries are invited to share their research on the volcanic environment that they both encountered during a joint residency as part of The Possible Island project on the island of Vulcano, in northern Sicily.
Between fertility and toxicity, what is the influence of the geological environment on contemporary artistic practices? How are artists inspired by this unique refuge?
Noémie Sauve (b. 1980 – Romans (26), FR) lives and works in Paris. She is a self taught artist, designer, and sculptress. Sauve works to create a visual iconography of fantasies, contemporary or past, about domesticity (the elements, the animal or the landscapes) through an exploration of shape as much as the material. She regularly collaborates with diverse specialists (Biology engineers, volcanologists, taxidermists, etc…) and concentrates on valorizing the complexity of the living world and the fundamental autonomie of its actions. Chosen by the jury of the Tara Pacific artist residency, she went aboard the scientific schooner in 2017 – Tara Océan & Agnès b Foundation. She is regularly invited onto growing projects combining art and science like the Vulcano island (Sicily) for The Possible Island in 2021. Her artistic practice is spread throughout different fields in which she is completely engaged such as the creation of the Fund for Agricultural Contemporary Art from the Clinamen association ( FACAC).
Benjamin van Wyk de Vries is professor of volcanology at Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans, Université Clermont Auvergne. He speaks and teaches in rough English, French and Spanish. He co-coordinated international Masters CENTRALRISK (Central America – Europe), and INVOGE (Europe – USA). He has set up courses such as ‘Teaching in English’: a course for university professors, and several other transdisciplinary multilingual courses. His research is transdisciplinary (volcanology, tectonics, geoheritage, risk, and communication). He has a broad publication portfolio, with diverse subject themes and is running a UNESCO Geosciences program project ‘Geoheritage for Resilience’. For him there should be no separation between the community, pure research and practical application, when dealing with the environmental issues and hazards. The scientist must work within society, and geoheritage is a powerful way to do this.