Cultivating cultural citizenship : acclimatize and the role of creative practices in digital, participatory art exhibitions dealing with climate change

Sammanfattning: The master thesis ‘Cultivating Cultural Citizenship - Acclimatize and the role of creative practices in digital participatory art exhibitions dealing with climate change’ studies Moderna Museet Stockholm’s (The Stockholm Museum of Modern Art) exhibition “Acclimatize” by conducting a multi-method qualitative case study aimed at holistically understanding what role creative practices in a museum setting can play in the climate change discourse. It investigates how digital participation can cultivate cultural citizenship by creatively practicing civic identity, and through accessibility and inclusiveness, open up alternative routes into the climate change conversation. By looking into the role of identity in the construction of civic confidence, it contributes both to the academic conversations on cultural dimensions of climate change as well as gains insights into the strengths and weaknesses of digital, participatory designs of climate change art exhibitions. The contribution of knowledge is primarily located in the media and cultural participation studies, resting on Peter Dahlgren’s circuit of civic culture. It also supplies the academic body of museum studies and art history, and takes the cultural turn of environmental humanities. By referring to Bruno Latour’s and Jane Bennett’s theories about a new, political ecology, the thesis is positioned in a multidisciplinary crossroads between environmental social science and humanities. What this research suggests is that art and creative practices can, when given a digital, participatory platform, construct an interspace between the political, personal and social wherein the individual can explore what it means to be a cultural citizen. The institutional conditions and design of the platform determine the affordances of the exhibition, directly affecting the potentials of the participatory project. In the climate change discourse, these platforms can provide a space for reflections on the cultural and personal experiences of climate change, which in turn can contribute to the construction of civic identity and cultural, civic and political participation.