finally, the city will continue to work

Net zero ambitions are increasingly unviable targets; the proliferation of large scale extraction of finite resources, increasing individualisation, and anthropocentrism, to name a few, coalesce to make transformation often seem impossible. Yet, reciprocity between humans and our natural and built environment is being somewhat challenged in the cities development of sustainability and sustainability-adjacent plans, but what these plans offer may not always be obvious nor materially present. Sustainability initiatives don’t simply require a restraint or a reduction, but a reciprocity with others, with the natural environment, and with values that promote collective flourishing. As two artists based in Glasgow and Copenhagen, we will collaborate to create artworks that embody the concept of reciprocity, rooted in imagery specific to our respective cities. We will adopt central tenets in theories of affordances, which positions our built environments as manifestations with possibilities beyond their initial object purpose.

This exhibition will showcase a series of surfaces, recorded using scans and rubbings, which are then overlaid to express reciprocal dynamics between Copenhagen and Glasgow, with a particular focus on surfaces and its planographic expression. The images are displayed physically in an exhibition, digitally through a website, and the original source material will be mapped digitally. The development of these materials is also a showcase of reciprocity between friendship and collaboration between two artists based between Glasgow and Copenhagen. The exhibition provides existing, small-scale evidence of ways that sustainability plans unravel in daily life, from public green spaces to active travel infrastructures across two cities with sustainability plans, but with very different levels of environmental achievements, socioeconomic priorities and related budgets. Despite missing targets, surpassed goals, and an atmosphere of misinformation, this exhibition emphasises existing reciprocal interactions in two urban cities between place and people. The exhibition seeks to offer forms of hope and momentary reprieve from what we have lost and are losing, to clarify what we can possibly mutually gain.

1: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/sustainableglasgow

2: https://urbandevelopmentcph.kk...