imponderables, when I’m facing politicians, institutional agents, fishing communities, for example, I feel a bit like an artist standing in front of an audience of real people. I feel it has an impact that has VM: the potential of changing people. Similarly the But what rehearsal, when you are in the process are these activities of creation, can change with these fishermen and you as an artist. other communities? GPL: Research. It is this participatory action. I can tell you what it means to me: it is to use science as a transformative process of society in which my subject is not examined in the laboratory, for example, but occurs in relation to concrete reality. The aim is not to make science elitist, but to be in direct dialogue with reality, and make this reality – comprised of individuals or groups of people – participatory. This implies there is a part dedicated to education, involving several months of interaction with different scientists. And it must be done by a multidisciplinary team. This diversity allows science to communicate, receive and exchange with reality. Usually I act when there is an issue that needs transformation. For example, the coastal area of the sea has been rising slowly and suffered a brutal erosion process. We have towns and villages by the sea, and we have beaches, dunes, ecosystems... What I do as a scientist is propose a specific question. For example: How can we properly manage this system? What is the integral solution for this situation and what are the actions and changes we need to undergo, which are the most likely to achieve good solutions? Then I take scientific information on how a particular system works, about what’s going to happen in the future, about the cost/ benefits of large measures. Later in the process, together with politicians, residents, non-governmental associations, local universities, surfers,
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IMAGINE 2020 - ART AND CLIMATE CHANGE — CURATED CONTRIBUTIONS