UN summits, like the Cop29 climate negotiations taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan this week, are some of the most visually uninspiring events on the planet. Endless ranks of suited diplomats sitting around tables in bland convention centres, talking to each other. Every now and again, you might see a delegate wearing some form of national dress, but on the whole there’s very little to stir the imagination.
The artists of the Artivist Network are trying to change that by bringing creativity and colour to Cop29. This week they built a 15m long giant serpent, as part of a call for Cop organisers to “weed out the snakes” of the fossil fuel industry, which has sent more than 1,700 lobbyists to the talks. The activists have also produced an exhibition of photographs of murdered environmental defenders from around the world, while a mime artist performed a show highlighting the shrinking space for civil society groups at UN meetings. At the Azerbaijani National Stadium, meanwhile, they covered up seats with black fabric to spell out the words “pay up”—referencing the argument that polluters should foot the bill for the costs of the climate crisis.
Kevin Buckland, a Barcelona based artist, who is part of the four-person core team that make up the collective, told The Art Newspaper that international media outlets had particularly latched onto their work this year. “The media at these meetings are really bored. They are looking for images but there’s hardly any from the talks themselves. As artivists we think in images, which the media really likes.”
The collective brings in additional members for different projects depending on the skills and talents that are required. For Cop29 they have a nine-person crew. Some work inside the summit, liaising with UN officials to negotiate permissions to hold their actions. They have a photographer and videographer to document their work and there’s a production team based in a studio in Baku making the artwork for each activity.
“The production team have put in massively long shifts,” says Buckland, who was helping out at the studio after a full day at the summit. “They were here at 8am this morning, it’s now 10.30pm and they will be going for a few more hours yet.”
The Artivist Network team works very long shifts to create the art for its activities
Photo: Bianca Csenki. Courtesy of Artivist Network
He adds: “Each year we’re trying to innovate, develop new tactics and push the boundaries of what’s allowed, to get around the very specific rules laid down by the UN.” At Cop summits protestors aren’t allowed to name individual countries, corporations or people, which makes targeting bad actors a challenge.
Buckland says that rather than being artists that make political art, they try to be more embedded in the social movements they are working with. He said that in the past, campaign groups and NGOs, often led by people with a lot of climate policy knowledge but maybe not the most creative minds, would come up with an idea for an action and then get an artist to make it happen.
The Artivist Network is trying to reverse that approach. “For us it’s about engaging more fully, understanding the demands and subtleties of the movement to the point where they allow actions to be artist-led,” Buckland says. “When we build that trust, beautiful things can happen.”