The Environment, Ecology, and Forms of Life

This workshop will investigate the environmental catastrophes and planetary crisis of our times. Workshop participants will explore different possibilities for a common future, more sustained ecological practices, a humble understanding of the human within the larger ecosystem of the planet, and multiple forms of life within this system that might be envisioned and narrated. Numerous sites of the African and Latin American continents hold the last repository of almost all the resources that capitalism requires for its future work. For that reason, forms of non-extractivism based on an understanding of economic and political forms of life are particularly relevant and pressing issues there. Infinite exploitation as the principal form of sustainability has not yet become the paradigm organizing Africa. We will also invite scholars and art practitioners working on/from countries with environmental crises that are less visible on the international stage, such as Iran, as well as other scholars, such as from India, where there has been a recent history of environmental struggles.