Image: Susan Schuppli, Nature Represents Itself (detail), 2018.

President's Dream Colloquium: Creative Ecologies

Creative Ecologies focuses on the intersection of art, culture, and environment to examine how cultural practitioners- artists, writers, anthropologists, historians, and interdisciplinary theorists- critically address and creatively negotiate environmental concerns. These concerns include anthropogenic climate change, habitat destruction, drought, species extinction, and environmental degradation.

This colloquium is designed around a series of talks by artists, writers, and theorists, on their thoughts on the humankind's impact on the planet and how we all can survive it.

Through public lectures by international speakers whose expertise spans such fields as visual culture and art history, anthropology and sociology, sensory ethnography and multispecies ethnography, Indigenous cosmopolitics and climate justice activism, the course aims to foster cross-disciplinary discussion on the emerging environmental arts and humanities in the academy and beyond.

What unites all of the speakers is their passionate commitment to challenge us to face the environmental bad news and to imagine human and nonhuman life in new and excitingly different ways.

The colloquium seminar will be held in SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (GCA) 4390 on Thursdays at 2:30 to 5:20 (class meeting times and locations will vary in relation to the public lectures)

Curated by Denise Oleksijczuk (SFU School for the Contemporary Arts) in collaboration with Zoë Druick (SFU School of Communication) and Michelle Levy (SFU Department of English). Dr. Denise Oleksijczuk will be the course instructor for President's Dream Colloquium on Creative Ecologies.

Featured Speakers

Elizabeth Povinelli (Frans Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University)
Extractive Ecologies & Filmic Creations: Examples from the Karrabing Film Collective
September 19, 3:30 pm | Big Data Hub, Presentation Studio, Room 10900 – Applied Science Building, SFU Burnaby
Note: In advance of Dr. Povinelli’s lecture, The Karrabing Film Collective’s Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland, (30 mins.) and Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams (28 mins.) will be screened on September 12 at 7:00 pm in the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema (SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver)
Register for this talk here

Timothy Ingold (Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen)
The Sustainability of Everything
September 26, 2:30 pm | Big Data Hub, Presentation Studio, Room 10900 – Applied Science Building, SFU Burnaby
Note: This talk will be presented via video conferencing
Reception to follow in atrium
Register for this talk here

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saaglig Nichnaabeg writer, scholar, and activist)
Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes)
With special guests: Amanda Strong, Bracken Hanuse Corlett, and Whess Harman
October 17, 7:00 pm | Fei and Milton Wong Theatre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Reception to follow in the Wong Theatre Lobby
Register for this talk here

Susan Schuppli (Director and Reader in the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmith’s, University of London)
“Earth Evidence”
November 7, 7:00 pm | Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Register for this talk here

Candice Hopkins (Independent art curator and writer, citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation)
Towards a Practice of Decolonial Listening: Sounding the Margins
In the early 70s, composer R. Murray Schafer, "We have no earlids, we are condemned to listen." In the visual arts we are so conditioned by our eyes that we forgot about our ears, but while we can't close our ears, it doesn't mean that we listen to everything that is being said? In other words, how can we practice a listening without an intend of what we might want to hear? Through sound, activism and art, this talk will look at how Indigenous peoples are responding to extraction economies and the climate crisis.
November 21, 7:00 pm | Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Reception to follow in the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Main Lobby
Register for this talk here

Claire Colebrook (Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University)
What would you do (and who would you kill) in order to save the world?
November 28, 3:30 | Big Data Hub, Presentation Studio, Room 10900 – Applied Science Building, SFU Burnaby
Reception to follow in atrium
Register for this talk – COMING SOON!

Screening: Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland & Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams

The films Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland, 2018, (26.29 mins.) and Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams, 2016 (28 mins.) by the Karrabing Film Collective and directed by Elizabeth Povinelli will be screened on Sept. 12 at 7:00 pm in the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Vancouver. For more information about this event, please go HERE.

Apply to Participate

Download, complete, and return the appropriate application form to dream@sfu.ca: Graduate Student Application + Undergraduate Student Application

All applications will be considered until the course is full.

Colloquium Syllabus

Read the full course syllabus HERE

Course requirements

Reading and colloquium lecture journals: 20%
Facilitating discussion on seminar readings: 10%
Paper or project proposal presentation, abstract, and schedule of work: 20%
Final research paper or creative project: 50%

Final grading

Graduate students: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Undergraduate students: Pass/Fail

Learn More

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