Critical Regionalism, Critical Climate Change: Field Notes from Southeastern Ohio
16Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Friday, September 17, 7:15 pm
Free and open to all
One of the richest components of this group / space has been the opportunity to engage, trace, and inform the work of various artists, activists, and thinkers over an extended period of time publicly. And to attempt in that publicness, not simply to affirm certain practices or efforts over others, but to find friends willing to also grapple with the emergent political processes, forms, and questions of our time.
The starting point for this talk is the micro-exhibition Political Ecology Research Sites, organized by Matthew Friday and Yates Mckee of the Ohio University Critical Regionalism Initiative in early 2010. This exhibition was an experiment in linking contemporary art history, graduate art training, regional field research, and environmental activism, with a special emphasis on the past, present, and future of coal and the conflicts surrounding it at local, national, and planetary scales. Drawing on the work of figures ranging from Robert Smithson to Van Jones, the exhibition set out to redefine Kenneth Frampton's classic project of "critical regionalism" in light of the discourse of experimental geography, with the aim of complicating the often depoliticizing visions of ecological sustainability put forth by artists, designers, and curators in recent years. With recent debates concerning the status of "the contemporary" in mind, this talk will argue for the necessity of linking art and criticism to a broad project of "critical climate change" in the Humanities that would be attuned to the multifaceted urgency of global warming. Artists to be discussed include Robert Smithson, Matthew Friday, Jeff Lovett, Jason Nein, Kainaz Amaria, and Ray Klimek, among others.
Follow us on Twitter
Find us on Facebook