Global Environment & Society Academy

Environmental Justice Seminar

Conohar Scott is the Leverhulme Artist in Residency at the Centre of Environmental and Marine Sciences at the University of Hull. He has just completed his PhD, entitled ‘The Photographer as Environmental Activist: Politics, Ethics & Beauty in the Struggle for Environmental Remediation’.

Framing Dissensus: the Projects of Environmental Resistance

conohar scott

a joint civil action against ENEL was launched by farmers.....they reported the presence of black dust in their fields, which made their crops unsellable.

No Al Carbone photobookEnvironmental Resistance org

The Global Environment and Society and Global Justice Academies hosted a seminar with Conohar Scott a founding member of the collective Environmental-Resistance.org, an artist-led collective, with members specialising in photography, environmental science, graphic design and translation studies.

The objective of Environmental Resistance is to raise awareness of, and to protest against, incidents of industrial pollution in the landscape. To this end, Environmental Resistance utilise their collective expertise in order to advocate for the remediation of polluted topographies.

Conohar talked the audience through the photobook produced by the collective, 'Environmental Resistance', in collaboration with Italian citizen group 'No al carbone'. It aims to highlight issues of environmental despoilation caused by the energy industry in the town of Brindisi in Puglia, southern Italy, and promote discussion.

The 20-minute paper was followed by a panel response from David Somerville University Sustainability Adviser in the department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability UoE, Ross Mclean, lecturer in landscape architecture and programme leader of the MFA Art Space Nature UoE and Callum McGregor, Lecturer in Community Learning and Development at the University of Dundee. The event was chaired by Apolline Roger, Lecturer in Law and GESA Steering Group member.

It is easy to become numb to the polluting sites that we see everyday and therefore consider as a normal sight. Conohar's work has a wakening effect by creating a dynamic space which re-introduces emotions in our relation to our industrial environment. The combination of the beauty of his photographs and the accuracy of the (worrying) pollution measurements, offered to the audience in an interactive way, is a very promising path to promote awareness and social mobilisation. We need more of this ground breaking cooperation between science and art

Dr Apolline RogerSenior Teaching Fellow, University of Edinburgh, School of Law