[artinfo] Art and Ecological Crisis: Planetary Consciousness in Practice / Open Call

[Maja and Reuben Fowkes]

Art and Ecological Crisis: Planetary Consciousness in Practice

A number of free places are available for this seminar group and those 
wishing to participate are invited to send a short motivation letter to 
the organisers. The group will meet at Translocal Institute on alternate 
Mondays beginning on 12 October 2015.

This seminar examines how contemporary art not only engages with current 
debates around the growth-oriented economy and its effect on the natural 
world, social inequality and its relation to climate change, the 
technocratic paradigm and forms of political power, but also decisively 
contributes to bringing about genuine change. It offers a forum to 
explore points of connection between global and planetary consciousness, 
indigenous knowledge and scientific culture, as well as multi-species 
and human solidarity. The seminar is based on reading and analysis of 
selected texts from a recent flourishing of environmental literature, as 
well as classical ecological writings, and discussion of the 
applicability of their insights for contemporary art. Equally, it 
considers artistic and curatorial case studies that are exemplary in 
producing integral ecological consciousness and putting planetary ethics 
into practice.

The seminar Art and Ecological Crisis: Planetary Consciousness in 
Practice is led by Drs Maja and Reuben Fowkes and organised in 
cooperation with the Department of Art Theory and Curatorial Studies at 
the Hungarian University of Fine Arts as part of Translocal Institute’s 
Experimental Reading Room project 2014-16. The Experimental Reading Room 
creates a space to interact, experiment, learn and dream our way to a 
new orientation towards ecological consciousness in contemporary art and 
society. Based around a parallel program of lectures by prominent 
international thinkers and thematic study circles, the project is 
designed to engender the self-production of socially-embedded, 
theoretically-informed and practically-oriented knowledge in the vital 
field of art and ecology.

For more information see:
http://translocal.org/readingroom/planetary.html

Supported by:
Erste Foundation