Pre-enacting climate change knowledge (PECCK)

PECCK explores how anthropology can participate in the contemporary highly dynamic knowledge practices associated with climate change. In particular, the project examines ways of understanding climate change knowledge through a speculative anthropology of knowledge. In collaborative experiments and scientific-artistic performances, PECCK develops, implements and analyses the pre-enactment of a real-fictional Austrian Climate Court of Audit, a demand of the recently successful Austrian climate referendum. With this research design, we aim to advance the anthropological methodology for studying climate change knowledge at the moment when this knowledge becomes part of democratic legislative procedures. Thus, the project participates in sizing climate change futures.

Starting from the hypothesis that socially impactful climate change knowledge is needed, the research project "PECCK" addressed two core questions: 1. What knowledge practices can strengthen relationships among diverse fields involved in "climate change knowledge ecologies" - including science, humanities, politics, administration, and civil society? 2. How suitable are collaborative experiments for making the anthropology of knowledge part of today's highly dynamic climate change knowledge practices? To explore these questions, the project embraced the Austrian citizens' initiative for a Climate Court of Audit (2020) as an existing ecology of climate change knowledge, working both within and beyond it. We chose to pre-enact the Climate Court of Audit and bring it into being as a real fiction. A transdisciplinary team - including an anthropologist, STS scholar, science curator, museum curator, filmmaker, and social designer, along with experts in climate science, administration, and activism - developed and performed the real-fictional campaign "Klimarechnungshof Jetzt!" This campaign included the real-fictional collection of case studies for audit and the auditing process itself. The project's transdisciplinary research design, based on collaborative workshops, performative film acts, and a campaign website that served as both a public platform and documentation of project activities, aimed to refine "real fiction" as an anticipatory research method, revealing insights into the approach's constraints and possibilities. Key insights include: 1. Multiple temporality: Real-fictional work is project-based and thus time-limited and intense. Real-fictional time is multifaceted: it serves as an assignment, a regular part of the work agenda, an extraordinary event, and an investment in follow-up projects. This temporality is transgressive, as it blurs professional, personal, and civic boundaries, making real-fictional engagement accessible to those able to blend roles, yet less accessible to those with rigid commitments. 2. Engagements: Real-fiction supports diverse forms of participation - from sporadic to sustained, individual to collective, and so forth. Examining the real-fictional "Klimarechnungshof Jetzt!" campaign as a performative moment in the local climate change knowledge ecology highlights the tension between these diverse modes of participation and the necessity of granular care practices to value each as an engagement. 3. Spatial Capital: Project-based methods like real-fiction can have an impact when spatial capital is available. Creating an inclusive space that welcomes all forms of participation and values them as engagements is crucial for the stability of these social relations. For the real-fictional campaign "Klimarechnungshof Jetzt!" the Volkskundemuseum Wien's open and adaptable space fostered varied engagements, demonstrating how spatial capital supports the creation of a climate change knowledge ecology.