It is often held that we live in a ‘risk society’, with ecological crisis, a pandemic, political instability, infrastructural vulnerability and economic volatility creating increasing danger and uncertainty. At both an individual and collective level, it is difficult to say what kind of world we might come to live in. Coming to grips with ‘risk’ is often understood to be a way of mitigating the worst effects of this state of affairs by by making the future knowable, manageable and even profitable (for some, at least). Artists, meanwhile, often mobilize risk in their work, with risky and chance-led processes used by those seeking to diminish or alter their agency in systems of production.

Risk, then, is variously to be avoided, managed, speculated upon, utilised or encouraged; and might be associated with danger or possibility (or both, sometimes simultaneously). Risk Related is a programme of challenging and playful artistic commissions and events exploring and utilizing risk, as well as the social, cultural, economic, political and ecological relations it draws from and gives rise to. Collaborating with academics from across the University and beyond, commissioned artists will explore how different forms of risk intersect, as well as adopting risky approaches and methods in their work. Initially intended to run across the 2019/20 academic year, it has now been extended into 2020/21 as a result of Covid-19.

For information about each commission please visit the relevant artist page below. The academic lead for Risk Related is Dr Ksenia Chmutina (Senior Lecturer in Sustainable and Resilient Urbanism): other partners are listed on the relevant artist's page.

For an interrogation of the relationship between risk, aesthetics, governance and arts practice which engages with the commissions, we recommend watching this conversation with Ksenia Chmutina and the curator and researcher Francesca Laura Cavallo, which we hosted as part of Loughborough University's Arts Week in June 2020.

Produced by Laura Purseglove and David Bell for Radar.