Current Trends in Ecopoetics
A Panel Discussion with painter Rackstraw Downes, poet Brenda Iijima, critic/scholar Joan Richardson & poet Jonathan Skinner
Thursday, September 16 at 6:30 PM
The School of Visual Arts, 133/141 West 21 Street, room 101C
New York City Admission: Free and open to the public.
Ecopoetics : how are artists reconceiving their work in respect to nature? Poets Brenda Ijima and Jonathan Skinner join painter Rackstraw Downes and critic/scholar Joan Richardson to discuss recent developments in their work regarding how to make art in relation to devastating human-engendered changes in the natural environment. As more artists respond to the condition of climate change, ecopoetics asks how we can begin to have a new understanding of our volatile world. How can and should we reimagine the way we conceive our relationship to nature? Is language "just talk" in the face of the current environmental crisis? Have our traditional ways of articulating ecological awareness - through either elegy or Chicken Little pronouncements that the sky is falling - become outdated ideas that rely upon problematic assumptions? What can our active roles be, given the increasingly unstable world in which we live and participate?
Two of the jumping-off points for the discussion will be recent publications by panel participants, including Jonathan Skinner's ongoing journal, titled ecopoetics [an ENORMOUS resource - tc] and Brenda Iijima's eco language reader.
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