Come and hear the latest in climate science and how researchers face the challenge of communicating it, when professor and climate scientist Katherine Richardson joins visual artist Rikke Luther for a talk as part of Luther’s exhibition Dust & Flow at Room Room.
The talk takes place Tuesday, June 4 at 18:30 at Thoravej 29.

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Glaciers, sea ice, and permafrost are melting. Ground is sinking and collapsing. Lakes are retreating, lakebeds collapsing, and surging mudslides are flowing ever faster toward the oceans.

For millennia, Earth’s system behaved almost statically. Until now. Human-induced global warming has set the entire system in motion, with the most dramatic transformations unfolding in the Arctic and Antarctic. Here, the pace of change is so rapid that scientists struggle to keep up with mapping the new biochemical topographies.

For years, artist Rikke Luther has explored climate change through practice-based research — focusing on how we, as humans, might begin to comprehend the accelerating transformations reshaping Earth’s system.

Luther’s postdoc is based at Art Hub Copenhagen and the ROCS Institute at the Universities of Copenhagen and Iceland, led by professor Katherine Richardson — former member of Denmark’s Climate Council (2019–2025) and head of the Planetary Boundaries research project.

Richardson has conducted groundbreaking marine biology research for decades and is a central figure in developing Earth System Science — a relatively new field that integrates various scientific disciplines to understand our planet as one complex, interconnected system, and how it is affected by human activity.

She is deeply committed to science communication, publishing widely and contributing to podcasts, exhibitions, and cross-disciplinary initiatives. By inviting Luther into the ROCS research environment, Richardson has also opened up scientific processes and insights to the world of art — insights that have significantly inspired Luther’s current exhibition Dust & Flow – Mud in the Earth System. Later this year, Luther will publish a book based on her research, with contributions by Richardson.

On June 4, the two meet for a public talk where they’ll share perspectives on their respective fields:
Richardson will present Earth System Science and the crucial role of mud in understanding life and climate on Earth. Luther will reflect on her exhibition and the role of art in making Earth’s radical transformations legible.

INFO

Wednesday, June 4, 2025
18:30–20:00
Art Hub Copenhagen // Room Room
Thoravej 29
2400 Copenhagen NV

Ticket: DKK 30 (includes a glass of wine)
The talk will be held in Danish.

Read more and see images from the exhibition Dust & Flow – Mud in the Earth System here.

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ABOUT KATHERINE RICHARDSON

Katherine Richardson’s research aims to deepen our understanding of the role of biological processes and biodiversity in the ocean’s upper carbon cycle — and how these affect food chains and the global carbon system. Her work in biological oceanography and Earth system science centers on interactions between the geosphere and biosphere, which have been the internal drivers of Earth’s system state throughout geological history.

Richardson is a core developer of the Planetary Boundaries Framework, which identifies safe limits for human appropriation of Earth’s system services. She was lead author on the landmark article Planetary Boundaries, published in Science Advances and downloaded nearly 600,000 times.

She currently leads Queen Margrethe’s and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir’s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society (ROCS).

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ABOUT RIKKE LUTHER

Visual artist and PhD Rikke Luther (b. 1970) graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1998. Her current work explores movements within the Earth System triggered by human-induced climate, environmental, and biodiversity crises. These conditions intersect with themes of landscape, language, politics, law, biology, and geology — expressed through drawing, photography, and film.

Luther’s work has been shown at biennials and triennials (Venice, Singapore, Echigo-Tsumari, Auckland, Gothenburg, Manifesta, São Paulo), museums and institutions (HKW, Smart Museum, Kunsthaus Bregenz, The New Museum, Museo Tamayo), group exhibitions (Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art, 48C Public.Art.Ecology, Weather Report: Art & Climate Change), and film festivals (CPH:DOX, Perth International Film Festival).

ABOUT RIKKE LUTHER’S POSTDOC

Ocean-Lands: Mud in the Earth System explores both the social and biocommunicative effects of sea and land mud movements, as part of a broader attempt to develop a new ethical and aesthetic public language capable of expressing the ongoing Earth system crisis.

Luther’s postdoc is based at ROCS and the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen. The project is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and ROCS.

In collaboration with Art Hub Copenhagen, Luther is also preparing a new publication with texts by Esther Leslie, Karina Krarup Sand, and Katherine Richardson.