Flow: Art and Ecology in the Time of Global Warming - symposium and exhibition
Western's Art faculty, students, and art and climate scholars from throughout the Puget Sound region have come together to present an exhibition and symposium. Both events are inspired by the study of climate change and its effects on the Puget Sound region. Two large watershed systems define the region: the Salish Sea and the Columbia Basin. The collaboration focuses on themes such as resilience, place-based knowledge, community engagement, and sustainability. Both events take place in the Kittredge Gallery at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.
The exhibition features the work of nine artists and collaborative teams working in the Salish Sea Watershed and Columbia River Basin. The artworks explore how land and place can help us connect and build new kinds of relationships in the face of accelerated climate change.
The symposium includes workshops, and facilitated conversations and presentations that engage with place/land based ways of knowing around the Columbia River basin and Salish Sea while contending with climate change. Nine individuals, listed on the exhibition page, co-organized this two day gathering, integrating reflection, discussion, and hands on interactive programming.
Exhibition
In the Flow
Art, Ecology, and Pedagogy
This exhibition embodies and demonstrates place-based and land-based ways of knowing through art, artifacts, and interactive projects by artists, educators, and students from the Cascadia region. It serves as the nexus for the Flow: Art and Ecology in a Changing Climate symposium.
Symposium
Flow
Art and Ecology in the Time of Global Warming
Flow explores ways to integrate, embody, and enact intersections between art and ecology through direct engagement with matter and materials such as dyes, pigments, and mycelium, multi-sensory guided walks, reflection on positionality and place, and critical examination of language and classification’s role in creating a sense of place and displacement.
Guiding themes and questions include:
- What is the role of the artist as healer and maker in navigating this current moment?
- How can approaches to reparative work and re-imagining be taught through creative practices?
- How can place/land based knowledge teach us how to connect and build relationships?
- How do we practice remediation and utilize loss?
The symposium is free but interested participants will need to register.
