Tega Brain, *This Is Not A Drill* 2022 Fellow, and Sam Lavigne

Fragile States, 2022
Prints, Website

Fragile States is an archive of interviews with former political prisoners who have been incarcerated for climate activism. It is an ongoing project to celebrate and financially support those who have taken a stand and have experienced severe governmental punishment, violence, and retaliation in return.

As the climate crisis deepens, governments around the world are aggressively expanding their legal regimes to crack down on protest and direct action. However, in exercising their power, they simultaneously reveal their own fragility. The extreme legal and police response to climate resistance is a tacit acknowledgment of the incredible potential opened by those standing up and demanding a livable future.

The archive currently includes interviews with Max Curmi (Blockade Australia), Red Fawn Fallis (Standing Rock), Daniel McGowan (Earth Liberation Front), and Rose (Extinction Rebellion, Sudan). Each was paid $1000 for their participation. All transcripts have been edited for length and clarity, and approved by the interviewees.

By redistributing research funds to support climate activists, this project also asks what role academic institutions should play in the response to the climate emergency. Academic timelines and the production of new insight and knowledge are now longer than the window we have to halt the crisis. At a time when many institutions continue to uphold the dangerous trajectory of the status quo, how might we transform the university, and redistribute its resources?

Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne's work, Fragile States, centers the voices, knowledges, and experiences of climate activists who have been imprisoned. Documenting and archiving their experience in a non-extractive way on large hanging canvases, this piece itself steps outside of the museological and becomes an act of activism and works towards establishing a new and more radical climate ontology.