Event overview
A Critical Ecologies research stream public lecture
What if we measure geo-engineering climate-change fixes by social-justice and speculative approaches to Afrofuturism (including Arthur Jafa’s video Love is the Message, the Message is Death, 2016), where climate signifies more than just the biogeophysical? What are the stakes of competitive accounts of the not-yet? How is technoscientific rationality currently colonizing what’s to come? What hope do we have to decolonize our future? Picking apart these questions, T. J. Demos will speak about his current research in progress concerning the end/s of the world/s and what comes next…
T. J. Demos is Professor of Art and Visual Culture, and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books, including Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (Sternberg Press, 2017), Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (Sternberg Press, 2016), The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis (Duke University Press, 2013) and Return to the Postcolony: Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2013). http://havc.ucsc.edu/faculty/tj-demos
The issue of climate change and environmental transformation is clearly one of the most significant challenges we face today. What is at stake in the ecological crises of the 21st century that raises specific questions and areas of concern for the arts, humanities, and cultural production? Who and what suffers or benefits from these crises and through what legal, economic, and political structures? How can we represent and narrate multi-scalar and multi-temporal phenomena to plan for and respond to uncertain futures? An era looms for which we have no clear template. The Critical Ecologies research stream tackles questions of global warming, environmental justice, colonial dispossession, climate migration, nuclear cultures, media geology and e-waste from an arts and humanities perspective that takes scientific research and practices seriously. The stream formalizes connections between existing areas of research and practice by bringing together established environment-focused initiatives from across Visual Cultures/Research Architecture, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Art, Sociology, Media & Communications, and English & Comparative Literature to develop collaborations, funding bids, and curricula. Our core aspiration is to evolve new academic platforms capable of shaping public debate. https://criticalecologies.gold.ac.uk
Image: still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, the Message is Death, 2016
Critical Ecologies Research Stream
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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21 Jan 2019 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
Accessibility
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