When:
Thursday, June 23rd, 4-5pm PST
Online via Zoom
Artists in Conversation about Climate Change
Join us on June 23rd for Artists in Conversation about Climate Change online via Zoom from 4-5pm PST.
In conjunction with the exhibition Facing West Shadows: The Endless End at the ICA, Artists in Conversation about Climate Change will bring together a panel of artists, organizers, and activists from various backgrounds to discuss the current Anthropocene epoch during which human intervention has been the dominant influence on our climate and the environment.
We must ask ourselves: How do we face the present and all of the challenges of climate change? Every culture has shared a vision for past and future apocalypses, but the impact of climate change and the potential of the sixth extinction feels like far more than a spiritual or existential crisis. We need practical solutions, ways that we can inspire change and provide solace, especially as we move through the collective trauma of fire seasons and summers well above a hundred degrees. Join the discussion and delve further into these topics and their representation through the arts. Be a part of what we do together!
ICA Executive Director James G. Leventhal is joined in conversation by Facing West Shadows artists Lydia Greer, Caryl Kientz, and Yawen Chien. Panelists also include Jodi Roberts of Art + Climate Action; Dilshanie Perera at The Climate Museum; and artist Ellen Sebastian Chang.
About Facing West Shadows:
Facing West Shadows (principal members: Lydia Greer (artistic director) and Caryl Kientz (theatrical director) in collaboration with artist Ya Wen Chien is a collective of artists, puppeteers, filmmakers, and musicians hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art that is sustainable in the current gold rush climate of the Bay Area. Facing West Shadows combines analog shadow theatre with original animation, video projection of found footage, and sometimes Opera performed live. Expanding into film, theatre, and installation, Facing West Shadows depicts stories re-imagined with unique visual storytelling to create surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms.
About Jodi Roberts:
Jodi Roberts is an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in San Francisco. She is Co-Founder and Managing Director at Art + Climate Action. Roberts was Director of Exhibition at Adrian Rosenfeld Gallery, San Francisco, and she has held curatorial positions at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Roberts has published widely in numerous peer-reviewed books and journals on topics ranging from Richard Diebenkorn’s drawings to Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, but her primary area of research is modern and contemporary art from Central and South America. In 2019, together with Natalia Brizuela, she co-curated the exhibition The Matter of Photography in the Americas at the Cantor and edited the accompanying publication. Roberts holds a PhD, MA, and BA in the History of Art and Architecture from New York University.
About Dilshanie Perera:
Dilshanie Perera (she/they) is a cultural anthropologist and writer whose work examines the intersection of emergent forms of risk with longstanding structural inequalities. Their doctoral dissertation in anthropology, titled “Barometer Falling: Weather, Risk, and the Meteorological Imagination,” focused on the politics of atmospheric risk in the context of climate change in Bangladesh. Dilshanie is currently the Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum, the first museum in the U.S. dedicated to inspiring action on the climate crisis.
About Ellen Sebastian Chang:
Ellen Sebastian Chang’s (she/her/rascal) theater work spans 45 years as a lighting designer, director, arts educator, and producer. She began her professional career at age 19 with the Berkeley Stage Company as a light technician; developed her craft as technical director/lighting designer with The Blake Street Hawkeyes; developed her writing/directorial style in the early ’80s with devised site-specific works, the seminal debut work “Your Place Is No Longer With Us.” Sebastian Chang has collaborated with and directed for: KITKA, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Eisa Davis, Youth Speaks, Holly Hughes, Word for Word, Center for Digital Story Telling, Fauxnique, Magic Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The Kitchen Sisters, Bill Talen, Anne Galjour, Felonious with One Ring Zero, Robert Karimi, and has a 12-year collaboration with Conjure Artist Amara Tabor Smith/ Deep Waters Dance Theater. She is currently serving as Resident Owner Board Member for East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative/Advisor for Esther’s Orbit Room Project/Artist Housing.
