Dr Wood Roberdeau

Staff details

Position Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures
Department Visual Cultures
Email w.roberdeau (@gold.ac.uk)
Phone +44 (0)20 7919 7496
Dr Wood Roberdeau

My background in the art world has directed me to develop a more theoretical or philosophical approach to contemporary creative practices within the wider environmental humanities. I explore modes of everyday experience through phenomenology and philosophical post-humanism to ask how a poetics of space and place or the 'lived environment' might resonate with climate change and futurity. My writing and pedagogy have been grounded by the spatial theme of dwelling or 'inhabitation' and new concepts of political ecology or 'cohabitations' following twentieth- and twenty-first century eco-criticism. I am particularly interested in questions concerning cultural production and reception in times of climate crisis and activism that explore a poetics of encounter, observation and participation (an 'eco-poetics'). I have published on culinary materialism and the alimentary, visual practices, 'vital materialism', and the rural vs. the urban as a complex spatial paradigm for eco-critical thinking.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London 2008
  • MA in Contemporary Art, Sotheby's Institute of Art, London 2002
  • BA in French Literature and Philosophy, Colorado College, Colorado Springs 1999

Teaching and Supervision

From 2019-22 I was Head of Department in Visual Cultures. During that time, I convened the MA Contemporary Art Theory Core Course entitled Conceptual Ecologies. I currently supervise dissertations across our programmes and teach on the following undergraduate and postgraduate modules:

Space & Time (BA year 1, 30 credits)
Inhabitations (BA year 2, 15 credits)
Cohabitations (BA year 2, 15 credits)
Ecopoetics (MA, 30 credits)

Previous modules I have convened include: Introduction to Art History, Contemporary Art Worlds, London Art Worlds, Postmodernities, and Contemporaneities.

Additionally, I am an examiner for the MA Contemporary Art Theory Symposium and contribute to the MA Research Architecture Symposium. Being part of the Department's research clusters on 'Environmental Humanities and Ecologies', 'Philosophy, Critical and Visual Theory', and 'Political Aesthetics', I have supervised and am currently supervising practice-based doctoral theses on networked retreat, shadow aesthetics, the post-photographic, the politics of food, and wildfire aesthetics. I have supervised MA dissertations at the Royal College of Art and have examined doctoral theses at Goldsmiths, the University of Westminster, and the University for the Creative Arts. I welcome PhD proposals.

Research interests

My research within Visual Cultures and Contemporary Art Theory turns to environmental studies, everyday aesthetics, eco-feminism, eco-phenomenology, and emerging discourses within the fields of New Materialism and Speculative Realism. Using these coordinates, I consider the activation of visual art within philosophical post-humanism, particularly in terms of subjectivity and agency, the ontology of objects and materiality, the politics of food, cultivation and agriculture, temporal scale effects, and geopower. I am the Chair of the Critical Ecologies Research Stream, a member of the Centre for Critical Global Change as well as the Kitchen Research Unit, and am Goldsmiths Pathway Lead for Sustainability and Climate Emergency on the South and East Network for Social Sciences Doctoral Training Programme (SENSS).

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Roberdeau, Wood. 2023. Experiments in Eco-poiesis: herman de vries and an Art of Immediacy. In: Fröydi Laszlo and Anna Risell, eds. The Anthropocene Laboratory. Gothenburg: Förlaget 284. ISBN 978-9198165005

Roberdeau, Wood. 2022. Fog (a Delegation for Atmosphere). In: Benek Cincik and Tiago Torres-Campos, eds. Postcards from the Anthropocene: Unsettling the Geopolitics of Representation. Barcelona: dpr-barcelona. ISBN 9788494938870

Roberdeau, Wood. 2018. After Baruchello: Agricultural Encounters in Contemporary Art. In: Ben Stringer, ed. Rurality Re-imagined: Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers and Wild Things. Novato, California: ORO Editions/Applied Research & Design. ISBN 978-1-940743-34-9

Article

Roberdeau, Wood. 2022. Counter-attacking Pollution in Three Aerial Acts. Performance Research, 26(7), pp. 23-30. ISSN 1352-8165

Roberdeau, Wood. 2018. Scalar Aesthetics of Ecocinema: The Wall and The Survivalist. Transformations Journal of Media, Culture and Technology(32),

Roberdeau, Wood. 2017. Kurt Schwitters and 27 Senses: Resonances in Norway, England and Time. Dada/Surrealism, 21, ISSN 0084-9537

Roberdeau, Wood. 2017. A Withdrawing Vital Material. TAKE on art magazine, 3(1), pp. 22-28.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2016. You Must Carry Me Now: The Cultural Lives of Endangered Species by Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson. Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, ISSN 1756-9575

Roberdeau, Wood. 2013. Gastronomic Worldviews of Transubstantiation. Parallax, 19(1), pp. 128-131. ISSN 1353-4645

Roberdeau, Wood. 2012. Meal Time as Medium: Duration and the work of AO&. Performance Research, 17(5), pp. 130-134. ISSN 1352-8165

Roberdeau, Wood. 2012. Poetic Recuperations: The Ideology and Praxis of Nouveau Réalisme. Journal of the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art,

Roberdeau, Wood. 2011. Going Public by Boris Groys. Art & the Public Sphere, 1(2), pp. 229-233.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2011. Developing the Negative. Philosophy of Photography, 2(1), pp. 169-173. ISSN 2040-3682

Roberdeau, Wood. 2011. Affirming Difference: Everyday Aesthetic Experience after Phenomenology. Contemporary Aesthetics, 9,

Roberdeau, Wood. 2010. Immanence as Aesthetic Documentation. rubric: document(3), pp. 10-14.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2009. Ordinary Origins: Encountering Others Encountering Objects. rubric: nascent(1), pp. 6-9.

Conference or Workshop Item

Roberdeau, Wood. 2024. 'Solastalgic Aesthetics and Living Extinctions in SGAAWAAY K’UUNA (Edge of the Knife)'. In: The Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies. University of Amsterdam, Netherlands 4 - 5 April 2024.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2023. 'The Seeds of Vandana Shiva: Story, Politics, Life and the Ravages of Biotech'. In: Screening and discussion co-hosted by MCCS and Critical Ecologies. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 7 June 2023.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2021. '‘Learning from Ice’ (with Susan Schuppli)'. In: Visual Cultures Postgraduate Seminar. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 4 November 2021.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2020. 'Biopolitics of the Plasticene'. In: Institute for Advanced Studies/Urban Lab Waste. University College London, United Kingdom 24 January 2020.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2019. 'Experiments in Eco-poiesis: The Long-term Praxis of herman de vries'. In: Experimental Engagements: Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 33rd Annual Conference. University of California Irvine, United States 7 - 9 November 2019.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2019. 'Feed Our Progress'. In: Sated, Visual Cultures Society and a/political. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 21 May 2019.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2019. 'Cohabiting the Microcosm and Macrocosm'. In: Calculative Environments. Nottingham Contemporary, United Kingdom 26 March 2019.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2019. 'Eco-Aesthetic Opacity and the Moving Image'. In: Darkness 2019: Island Dynamics Conference. Longyearbyen, Svalbard and Jan Mayen 13 - 17 January 2019.

Roberdeau, Wood and Turner, Lynn. 2019. 'Living Extinctions: Visual Cultures Public Programme Autumn Term 2019'. In: Living Extinctions: Visual Cultures Public Programme Autumn Term 2019. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 4 October - 12 December 2019.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2018. 'Monochrome Green: On Eco-Aesthetics, Reductionism and Abstraction'. In: Green, The European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 12th Annual Conference. Copenhagen, Denmark 13 - 16 June 2018.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2017. 'Time and (Un)doing'. In: Out of Time, Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 31st Annual Conference. Arizona State University, Tempe, United States 9 - 12 November 2017.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2015. 'Nature vs. Culture: Xenotext and the Poetic Limit'. In: After Biopolitics: 29th Annual Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA) Conference. Rice University, Houston TX, United States 12 - 15 November 2015.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2015. 'Untitled'. In: What Does Climate Change? 80 Years of Politics - Left and Right. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 23 October 2015.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2015. 'Readymade Rurality and Ecological Non-knowledge: Imagining the Art Farm'. In: Re-imagining Rurality, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. University of Westminster, United Kingdom 27 - 28 February 2015.

Roberdeau, Wood and Turner, Lynn. 2015. 'Critical Environments: Visual Cultures Public Programme Spring Term 2015'. In: Critical Environments: Visual Cultures Public Programme Spring Term 2015. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom January-March 2015.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2014. 'Sites of Vital Materiality: Art History’s Apiaries and Ecologies of Everyday Life'. In: Art History and Ecology: Association of Art Historians 40th Anniversary Conference. Royal College of Art, United Kingdom 10 - 12 April 2014.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2013. 'Centralizing the Periphery: Social Art, Eco-aesthetics and Liminal Space'. In: Ordinary/Everyday/Quotidian. University of York, United Kingdom 26 - 27 September 2013.

Broadcast

Roberdeau, Wood. 2013. The Ecological.

Printed Ephemera

Roberdeau, Wood. 2015. Poetic|Baroque|Differential.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2014. Quiet Totemism.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2010. 'Happiness Is Closer than You Think'.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2002. Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Talo/The House.

Roberdeau, Wood. 2000. Mona Hatoum, Roni Horn, Teresita Fernández.

Further profile content

Conferences and talks

2024: 'Solastalgic Aesthetics and Living Extinctions in SGAAWAAY K’UUNA (Edge of the Knife)'
The Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 04-05 April

2023: 'The Seeds of Vandana Shiva: Story, Politics, Life and the Ravages of Biotech'
Screening and discussion co-hosted by MCCS and Critical Ecologies, Goldsmiths, 07 June

2021: ‘Learning from Ice’ (with Susan Schuppli)
Visual Cultures Postgraduate Seminar, Goldsmiths, 04 November

2020: ‘Biopolitics of the Plasticene’
Institute for Advanced Studies/Urban Lab Waste, University College London, 24 January

2019: 'Experiments in Eco-poiesis: The Long-term Praxis of herman de vries'
Experimental Engagements, Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 33rd Annual Conference, University of California, Irvine, 07-09 November

2019: 'Feed Our Progress'
Sated, Visual Cultures Society and a/political, Goldsmiths, 21 May

2019: 'Cohabiting the Microcosm and Macrocosm'
Calculative Environments, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 26 March

2019: 'Eco-Aesthetic Opacity and the Moving Image'
Darkness, Island Dynamics, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, 13-17 January

2018: 'Monochrome Green: On Eco-Aesthetics, Reductionism and Abstraction'
Green, The European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 12th Annual Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, 13-16 June

2017: 'Time and Environment in The Survivalist'
Out of Time, Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 31st Annual Conference, Arizona State University, Tempe, 09-12 November

2015: ‘Nature vs. Culture: Xenotext and the Poetic Limit’
After Biopolitics, Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 29th Annual Conference, Rice University, Houston, 12-15 November

2015: 'Untitled'
What Does Climate Change? 80 Years of Environmental Politics – Left and Right, Platypus Affiliated Society, Goldsmiths, 23 October

2015: ‘Readymade Rurality and Ecological Non-knowledge: Imagining the Art Farm’
Re-imagining Rurality, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster, London, 27-28 February

2014: ‘Sites of Vital Materiality: Art History’s Apiaries and Ecologies of Everyday Life’
Art History and Ecology, Association of Art Historians 40th Anniversary Conference, Royal College of Art, London, 10-12 April

2013: ‘Centralizing the Periphery: Social Art, Eco-aesthetics and Liminal Space’
Ordinary/Everyday/Quotidian, University of York, York, 26-27 September