ABSTRACT

The Australian Climate Guardians offer a fascinating example of new modes of political performance that draw on feminist ecopolitics, the bodily power of assembly and the techniques of site-specific activism. Appearing together in public dressed as angels in long white robes bedecked with large feathered wings, the Climate Guardians intervene in the politics of climate change in Western patriarchal capitalist economies. Understanding that both the left and right of politics have vested interests in industrialisation, the angel figures aim to transcend the everyday while remaining deeply invested in the world. Hence they gather in proximity to iconic symbols of the capitalist-industrial-carbon producing order, such as a regional coal station and a city stock exchange, in what we can understand as agonistic acts of protest. These acts render carbon producers as the hostile other while mobilising those who stand for the future of the planet. In their many appearances in public spaces, the Climate Guardians circumvent party politics while giving ‘agonistic form’ to the political debate about climate change.