ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NOW!

Mayday Artists, Activists and Environmental Historians Conference

Centre for World Environmental History (CWEH) University of Sussex

Wednesday 1 May 2019

10am – 6pm

The Gardner Tower

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts   University of Sussex

Free participation rsvp to:

CWEH-activists and academia forum

actacdforum@sussex.ac.uk (for Zuky Serper |CWEH artist)

About

Mayday Artists, Activists and Environmental Historians Conference

Political Ecology  –  Engaged Art  –  Decolonisation and Climate Activism  –  Forensic Environmentalism  –  Anthropocene Critique  –  Environmental History

How do artists engage with political ecology and climate justice? What does art contribute to environmental studies? Anthropocene: How decolonisation, climate activism and art de-construct the concept? How is this critical reading represented in art and environmental history? Which scholarly resources of environmental history could artists engage with?

Contemporary art practitioners invited to this event represent latest interpretations of [socially] engaged art practice, and work in site-specific placements. This practice involves non-artists and non-art, and does not always end up with the conventional image or art object in an art exhibition as an outcome.

This conjuncture of Anthropocene and Decolonisation/climate art activism, will be explored in a series of presentations, performances, spoken word delivery, display and small-group workshops in a day at the Gardner Tower, convened by the CWEH-activists and academia forum artist, University of Sussex.

 

PROGRAMME:

9:00-10:00  Exhibition installation

9:30-10:00 Registration + Coffee

10:00-11:00 Introduction: Why art and environmental studies?

Zuky Serper, Vinita Damodaran, Rohan D’Souza + Lorna Ough: Exhibition

11:00-12:00 Decolonise and Climate Strikes Activism

Paris Palmano: Spoken word piece about war – ‘Great Britain’

with Laurel Hedleigh

12:00-13:00 Politicising visual representation and indigenous knowledge

Felix Padel and Malvika Gupta: Indigenous Spirit under State Education; the Cases of India and Ecuador (working title)
Rahul Ranjan: Sasindiri to Pathalgadi: Material Turn in the Resistance Movement amongst Adivasi

13:00- 13:30 Lunch

13:30 -14:00 Exhibition talk withLorna Ough

14:00-15:00 Decolonising art; Decolonising academia
Al Coffey, Liz Crane, Tom Nicholson: Symbols of Empire

Eve McCallam: How art can be used to envision more than the Apocalypse in the age of Environmental Catastrophe

15:00 -16:00 Workshop; small group discussions

 16:00-16:30Coffee break

 16:30-17:30Visual representation of environmental conflicts and nature

Robert Walis: Images of extractive capitalism in India, life under mining
Larissa Condradt – Art forms in Nature

17:30-18:00 Summary

18:00 -18:30 CWEH book and magazine launch:

The Politics of Swidden farming: Environment and Development in Eastern India / Dr Debojyoti Das

And

MARG – A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS- December 2018-March 2019 / Henry Noltie