Frictions:Index

FRICTIONS

The research for FRICTIONS starts from the substantial gap between European policy commitments for a climate-neutral economy and the reality on the ground for many small-scale initiatives across Europe, facing regulatory systems that do not fit the intricate, locally embedded work that they do. FRICTIONS engages with this impasse at a practical level, taking the day-to-day practice of administration as a place where thoroughly different protocols, relations and ways of thinking about regulation might be imagined and forged. The research approach departs from notions of progress and modernity that characterise much of transition discourse, to concentrate instead on systems change at the micro-level of habit and everyday process, with a particular focus on the procedural spaces of administration as places where things often feel stuck.

This research is initiated by Kate Rich, through her Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, hosted at the Alpine Community Economies Lab (ACELab), research arm of the small alpine NGO Brave New Alps (IT). The Fellowship runs from 2024 to 2027 and involves three years of exchange and learning with The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (BE), Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (NL), Trajna (SLO) and FoAM (BE/CRO).

MSCA FRICTIONS

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101147188).

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