Ecologies in Practice: Environmentally Engaged arts in Canada

Co-edited with Elysia French 
Forthcoming in 2024 from Wilfrid Laurier University Press

LINK TO PRESS PAGE
https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/E/Ecologies-in-Practice

What is the responsibility, or the task of the arts as we face environmental crisis?

Ecologies in Practice is an edited collection of dynamic and multi-formatted contributions exploring the ways in which cultural production informs perceptions, communications, and knowledge of environmental distress in a Canadian context, pointing to the significance of the Arts in the creation and sharing of crucial counter narratives and alternative possibilities. Ecologies in Practice identifies the arts as an important mode of inquiry for reimagining, and for public engagement and understanding of pressing environmental and social concerns, while acknowledging the ways in which it contributes important work to the growing interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities.

Bringing together artistic perspectives from a range of lenses and voices,including; artists, writers, scholars, activists, curators, theorists, and makers, Ecologies in Practice offers important tools for artists, scholars, students, and research-creators invested in arts and the environment. Contributors present artistic methods as alternative sites of understanding that contribute significant and affective work to environmental scholarship, while thinking outside of the disciplinary borders and confines of the artworld. Ecologies in Practice aims to initiate vital conversations among practitioners, and together with readers, consider what environmentally engaged arts lend differently to these conversations.


Table of Contents:

An Introduction to Making Ecological, Elysia French and Amanda White 

INTERRUPT: Making as Intervention
Notes from a Garden Wedged into the City, Camille Georgeson-Usher
Dirty Nature: Pedagogy, Performance, Politics, David Huebert and Tom Cull
I Believe in Living: an intertextual curatorial approach to environmental (inter)relations, Ellyn Walker

WITNESS: Picturing the Invisible
seeds are meant to disperse [to get to the future, a return to the past], Christina Battle
Of Passengers and Lost Relations, Lisa Hirmer
Carbon Study: Walking in the Dark, Genevieve Robertson

(RE)PLACE: Offering Alternative Experiences of Place into steps and breath, leah decter
Coney Island MTL: Re-Mediating the Greatest Show on Earth, Natalie Doonan
After The Fire, Andreas Rutkauskas
Listening in Place, Emma Morgan-Thorp

REFLECT: Considerations of a Material Practice
Can Ceramics Ever be a Sustainable Cultural Practice? Mary Ann Steggles
Mapping Narratives: Methods and Entanglements of Social Practice, Maria Michails
1:10000, Dana Prieto
Field Work: Rural Residencies and Environmental Arts, Emily McGiffin

Conclusion, Elysia French and Amanda White
Bibliography
Contributor Biographies