Dr Wood Roberdeau
Staff details
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. 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-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.
Academic qualifications
- PhD in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London 2008
- MA in Contemporary Art, Sotheby's Institute of Art, London 2002
Teaching and Supervision
Space & Time (BA year 1)
Inhabitations (BA year 2)
Cohabitations (BA year 2)
Ecopoetics (MA)
Research interests
My research turns to environmental studies, everyday aesthetics, 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, cultivation and agriculture, temporal scale effects, and geopoetics.
Publications and research outputs
Book Section
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. 2022. Experiments in Eco-poiesis: herman de vries and an Art of Immediacy. In: Fröydi Laszlo, ed. The Anthropocene Laboratory. Gothenburg: Förlaget 284.
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),
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 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 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.
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
Featured publications
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.
2021:
'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).
Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups
Conferences and talks
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, 7-9 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, 9-12 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
