RJK (Save the Earth Club)
Once a week, a group of angry 10 year olds meet with us at Art Lab Gnesta. They call themselves RJK (Rädda jorden klubben, Save the Earth Club) and explore methods of art and civil disobedience for a better climate policy future. They carry a great deal of frustration by trying to change local considerations for the environment and ecology and share the experience of not being heard by adult decision-makers. The Monday meetings take different forms, artistic processes are run, movies are recorded, letters and fanzines are printed and future plans are forged. They repeatedly demonstrate for the climate outside the town hall, where the upset 10-year-olds ride their monstrous stick horses, among other things.
The Save the Earth Club uses play and resistance in the sixth mass extinction and works through artistic processes.
The project explores interdisciplinary methods and stimulates conversations and work about the present and the future.
In long-term fate issues such as how humans handle the surrounding ecology, the group RJK conducts an extremely important conversation with us at Art Lab Gnesta.
One of Art Lab Gnesta’s artistic leaders talks about how the collaboration started:
“A group of girls stormed in through the door of our old brick house. They move quickly, like a flock of birds here and there, creating a collective body.
“Away with oil, away with coal …” Their angry voices echo between the walls.
“We are RJK … or the Save the Earth Club … We are going to save the earth NOW!” says one of the children. She stares at me and pushes her big glasses into place on her nose. A blue strand of hair hangs down in front of her face.
The children say that they have a club meeting every Monday to mobilize ways to save the earth. They need a place to work, and they wonder if we also want to save the earth? Or do we have something else to do that was more important?
The girl with the glasses does not let go of my gaze for a second and tells me that until now they have had their meetings in her garden. Now they are looking for a home that also works in the winter.
I stop what I am doing, and clear my calendar for every Monday for years to come.
Welcome, I say and give RJK the code to Art Lab Gnesta’s premises. I climbe up the stairs. The girls whine wildly and push past me and gallop upword, into the house on their imaginary horses. ”
Signe Johannessen