Lost/Found/Wanted

Often referred to the “sixth extinction” more than 40% of world’s plant species are facing extinction due to aggressive farmland cultivation and “one in four mammals and one in eight birds face a high risk of extinction in the near future” (IUCN Red List). Through a shared assignment focused on extinct and/or endangered non-human animal and botanical species, students in two Experimental Humanities courses came together for a workshop organized in collaboration with Eureka! House and Iron Path Farms in Kingston. On view here are risograph (digital screen printing) posters created during this workshop as well as documentation of where each poster was installed around the Bard campus.

 

Funding was provided by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN), an interdisciplinary program supported by the Open Society University Network. EHCN emphasizes a hands-on and critical approach to the role of technology throughout history, a deep commitment to grassroots movements for political, environmental, and social justice, and the cultivation of creative practice as an engine of experimentation.

Course Collaboration

Faculty members Krista Caballero (Experimental Humanities) and Stephanie Lee (Architecture) collaborated to guide this interdisciplinary project.

AS 310: ART, ANIMALS, AND THE ANTHROPOCENE

Professor: Krista Caballero

From species extinction to radioactive soil and climate change, we are now in the age of the Anthropocene. This recently proposed geologic period refers to the ways in which human activities have dramatically impacted and altered every ecosystem on Earth. Now in an age of mass extinction, what does it mean to visually interpret our more-than-human world and explore the often messy and complicated encounters between human and nonhuman animals? Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge will ground our exploration as we consider the cultural, artistic, and technological implications of species decline. This course is part of the Rethinking Place Initiative.

 

Students:

Penelope Bernal Cabildo
Josh Guerrero
Emily Hamilton
David Hong
Inju Keum
Mabel Kim
Kaela Kleinman
Dania Leibowitz
Beritt Perdue
Felicity Reynolds
Ananda Vidal-Burgie
Clementine Williams
Minshi Yang
Anna Spirochova
Odette Zhou

ARCH 221: PARAFICTIONAL DESIGN

Professor: Stephanie Lee

What does it mean to create an infrastructure of care, and systems of resilience within a capitalist landscape of production, extraction, and exploitation? ARCH 221 is a design studio seminar which explores architecture as a network of situated relationships between built and non-built environments. We will inquire design research from a planetary dimension by zooming in, pulling apart, and realigning various forms of rural, agricultural, and food systems.

 

Students:

Calder Duffy
Montserrat Fonseca
Amadou Gadio
Emily LeCompte
Edie Odegard
Alim Samat
Nicholas Siao-Claassen
Moran Wehrli