ANTHROPOCENE CONSEQUENCES
Anthropocene Campus Chicago: crafting a livable collective future in daunting times
Do you think climate change is real? Do you care about the relations between art, science, politics and the natural world? Do you envision alternative ways of living in the future – while keeping a close eye on actual modes of life in the present? Would you like to meet new people who are involved with exactly these issues? Join us for a collective experiment in ecological science, environmental justice, artistic activism and organizing under increasingly chaotic conditions, with a focus on Chicago, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Watershed, where knowledge is not only shared, but created together.
Anthropocene Consequences is a four-day cycle of conversations, excursions, workshops, and gatherings — from Wednesday, October 22 through Sunday, October 26 — aimed at imagining a way through a daunting future together. We will move from Watershed Art and Ecology in Pilsen, to the University of Illinois at Chicago for events organized by UIC’s Freshwater Lab and Anthropocene Lab, to the “Untidy Objects” living sculpture south of the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, to Steelworkers Park and Narrow Bridge Arts Club. By creating common tools, insights, and imaginaries with which to to meet pressing environmental crises, we will explore how learning can become a form of action, and how new forms of teaching can open paths through the complexities of this time.
These events will include an afternoon at Steelworkers Park on Friday, October 24, from 1:30–4, devoted to “digging for histories and listening for futures.” It will feature a talk by Potawatomi historian of Indigenous Chicago John Low, a walk around the former US Steel South Works plant and proposed “quantum prairie” with members of the Steelworkers Park Advisory Council, and a memory- and future-oriented chorus surrounding the parklands involving all interested attendees. We will convene afterwards at Narrow Bridge Arts Club in Hyde Park for a “sedimentary dinner."
All events are free but require registration so that we can have enough chairs and food for all. Please register at our website, which includes all other crucial details: https://ac-chicago.org/
These gatherings are organized by a wide range of local and far-flung artists, activists, and researchers linked across the years through Deep Time Chicago and the Anthropocene Commons, including the collectives linked above as well as University of Chicago’s Environmental Arts & Humanities Lab (The City and its Others), with additional support from CEGU, or the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization. If you want to get involved with the Lab and help make these events great, please contact Sylvia Boulette, boulette@uchicago.edu.
