A film by Oliver Ressler
17 min., 4K, AT/RO2016
In the first film, activists contest the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, a city then under a state of emergency. Like twenty failed annual climate conferences before it, COP21 in Paris in 2015 proved the incapacity of governments to commit themselves to any binding agreement that would curtail global warming through a definite strategy for the end of fossil fuel use. The resulting Climate Agreement avoids anything that would harm the economic interests of corporations. The governments now pretending that non-binding agreements can hold back climate change are the same ones whose binding free trade pacts make dead letter of local environmental and climate legislation.
Director and producer: Oliver Ressler
Cinematography, audio recording: Oliver Ressler
Narration text: Oliver Ressler & Matthew Hyland
Editing: Oliver Ressler
Narrator: Renée Gadsden
Color correction: Rudolf Gottsberger
Sound design and music: Vinzenz Schwab
The project was commissioned by MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest for Oliver Ressler’s solo exhibition “Property is Theft” and received support from the ERSTE Foundation, BKA – Kunst and Otto Mauer Fonds.
Special thanks to: Calin Dan, Christiane Erharter, Matthew Hyland, John Jordan, Max Liljefors, Adriana Oprea, Johanna Schwanberg, Walter Seidl, and Janet Stewart.
“Everything’s coming together while everything’s falling apart: COP21” is part of Oliver Ressler’s ongoing project “(link: Everything’s coming together while everything’s falling apart.”
All works: Courtesy the artist, àngels Barcelona, The Gallery Apart, Rome
Contributed by
Oliver Ressler