Join us for a series of events across the afternoon exploring the potential of art and exchange in response to some of the environmental challenges of our times:
Environments / Encounters / Exchanges
Drop in 12.00 – 18.00
Problems caused by global environmental change require innovative solutions.
This afternoon of events explores how arts practices based in exchange (between artists and scientists; between artists and the environment; between artists and participants; amongst participants): might begin to respond to some of the environmental challenges of our times. A series of events will stage a series of environmental encounters that explore the role of art and invite reflection on our relationship with the Earth.
Explore underground spaces through the collective creation of an imagined underground cave network with Flora Parrott.
Join a knitting workshop with artist Miriam Burke, tying together conversations and observations about the local environment with yarn. (No experience necessary and materials, patterns and knitting help will be provided).
Participate in a collaborative artwork using ideas of ‘damage’ to explore how natures can be crossed out or erased, with poet Amy Cutler.
The events are organised by the Royal Holloway Centre for the GeoHumanities as part of the Centre’s commitment to exploring how arts practices can enable us to imagine and enact different Earth Futures.
Talk: Walking Aesthetics and Performing Landscape
16.00 – 18.00
Discover walking as an art form and its potential for performative social and environmental encounters in this talk by artist Dee Heddon.
For artist and researcher Dee Heddon, walking is an aesthetic practice concerned with environments, encounters and exchange. Framed within the wider concern of the relationships between performance, art and landscape, this talk tells stories of walking as a space for exchange of experience, knowledge and relations.
In her project 40 Walks Dee explored the relations between walking, space and friendship. In Walking Interconnections she and collaborators questioned the framing of walking as a universal environmental experience, acknowledging the value of the lived experiences of those who walk differently. In her ongoing project The Walking Library she and artist Misha Myers ask what it is to take a book out for a walk, setting up dialogues between texts and environments.
Dee Heddon is Professor of Contemporary Performance at the University of Glasgow. She is author of numerous publications including Autobiography and Performance (2008) and co-editor of a new book series for Palgrave on 'performing landscapes'.
This talk is the second Denis Cosgrove Lecture in the GeoHumanities organised by the Royal Holloway Centre for the GeoHumanities as part of a Tate Exchange day on the theme of environments, encounters and exchanges.
These events are programmed by Royal Holloway, University of London, a Tate Exchange Associate.
About Royal Holloway, University of London
Royal Holloway, University of London is a community of over 10,000 students and academics committed to fostering creativity and excellence in teaching and research.
Royal Holloway has an emphasis on creative subjects, with outstanding Drama, Theatre & Dance, Media Arts, Music, Modern Languages and Geography.