LASER TALKS IN TACOMA: Decolonizing Land's Imaginary
Art+Science symposium in the context of the Flow: Art and Ecology conference. 

Prof Richman will moderate a panel including Prof Rachel De Motts, Prof Renee Simms and our visiting sci-artist Prof. Banu Subramaniam

EVENT INFO

When: Friday Nov 3, 5:30-7pm PDT, Find your timezone here

Where: Kittredge Gallery, University of Puget Sound

Screening followed by Q&A with the artist

On November 6, 2023 at 5:30-7pm - LASER TACOMA will host EMMY Award winning documentary video maker Kathy Brew at the Puget Sound University. Join us for a screening of the ‘Thread’ detailing the revitalization of indigenous weaving and textile making in Peru at the Tahoma room.Refreshments will be served

SYMPOSIUM

Flow: Art and Ecology in a Changing Climate is a two day symposium at the University of Puget Sound on November 3-4, 2023. The symposium includes an affiliated Kittredge Gallery exhibition, In the Flow: Art, Ecology, and Pedagogy.

The exhibit 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 below, co-organized this two day gathering,  integrating reflection, discussion, and hands on interactive programming.

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?

Further information and context can be found here.

Flow: Art and Ecology in the Time of Global Warming co-organizers:

- Melonie Ancheta, Director Pigments Revealed International, researcher, artist, educator

- Natalie Baloy, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Western Washington University

- Cynthia Camlin, Professor, Art and Art History, Western Washington, University

- Heidi Gustafson, artist and ochre specialist

- Beverly Naidus, Emerita Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio Arts, University of Washington, Tacoma

- Daniela Naomi Molnar, independent artist and poet

- Matt Reynolds, Associate Professor of Art History, Whitman College

- Elise Richman, Professor Art and Art History, University of Puget Sound

- Cara Tomlinson, Professor Art, Lewis and Clark College

Additional Participants:

- Rachel DeMotts, Professor, Environmental Policy and Decision Making, University of Puget Sound

- Dann Disciglio, Visiting Professor of Digital Media, Lewis and Clark College

- Amanda Leigh Evans, Visiting Assistant Professor, Art, Whitman College

Cleo Wölfle Hazard, Assistant Professor School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington

- Yixuan Pan, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio Arts, University of Washington, Tacoma

- Sasha Petrenko, Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Expanded Media, Western Washington University

- Renee Simms, Associate Professor & Leadership Team Member, African American Studies, and the Race and Pedagogy Institute, University of Puget Sound

- Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman, Assistant Professor in Socially Engaged Art, Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Western Washington University + Visiting Professor, Institut für Kunst im Kontext, Universität der Künste Berlin (2023-24)

- Banu Subramanium, Professor & Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies, Wellesley College

- Arianne True, Washington State Poet Laureate (Choctaw, Chickasaw)

Lewis and Clark Art and Ecology course students: Sophie Abbassian, Miriam Baena, Summer Dae Binder, Owen Clark, Allison Clarke, Mallory Dubois, Margo Gaillard, Liv Ladaire, Gillian Largay, Paloma Richeson, Gabriel Rosenfield, Stella Scheffer, Anthi Sklavenitis, Ezequiel Walker, Lila Ward, and Aiden Wilkson

Western Washington Art and Ecology Students

SPONSORS:

The Leonardo/ISAST LASERs are a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of the LASERs is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 50 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website. @lasertalks