Where and how do power and performativity, complicity, and deep-seated structural inequalities under greenwashing strategies unfold? What happens when representation is reduced to the management of risk?
THE ESG SHITSHOW or We Can’t Afford a Tragedy of the Horizon is a collective reading and melodrama about the recent origins of greenwashing, and the people and finance structures that promote it. Comprised mostly of quotes that have been copy-pasted from the internet, the work features the voices of the World Bank, an idealistic UN representative, a disillusioned Black Rock sustainability investor, former US vice-president Al Gore, an expert leftist macroeconomist, an ecofeminist, and a self-righteous activist – among others.
The work is designed to be read aloud together by a group of people. At the beginning of the reading, the artists will introduce the melodrama’s characters. The script will be shared, and attendees can choose to read a role. Everyone is encouraged to read badly, with conviction. The reading is followed by an open discussion, moderated by the artists.
THE ESG SHITSHOW or We Can’t Afford a Tragedy of the Horizon addresses questions around power and performativity, complicity, deep-seated structural inequalities, and what happens when representation is reduced to the management of risk. Since 2023, it has been performed in a number of activist and art-institutional contexts, from the Ende Gelände System Change Camp to the station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf.
Sonja Hornung & Daniele Tognozzi have been working in activist and cultural contexts in Berlin since 2015. In their artistic, research-based practices, they investigate the interaction of art with gentrification processes and finance-driven infrastructural change in the context of the climate crisis. Their joint works have been shown at the Berlin project space sign, CIAT, the Hygiene Museum Dresden, the station urbaner kulturen Hellersdorf and in a group exhibition as part of the One World Romania film festival. Together they were involved in the collectively curated projects SOFT SOIL and The Driving Factor (nGbK Berlin, 2020/2022).