Natalie Loveless: From Relational to Ecological Form

The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (‪@idsva‬) is pleased to announce this lecture from the series ON THE ANTHROPOCENE: Either/Or. The lectures address the role of art and philosophy in relation to questions of ecology, climate change, co-existence, and sustainability as an existential urgency of our times.
"From Relational to Ecological Form" Why does form matter? Why, given the urgency of the contemporary moment, attend to artistic form at all? This talk will track debates on artistic form in the long 20th century in order to propose a distinction between art on ecology and art that is formed ecologically. Giving theoretical and art historical background for this distinction, Loveless argues for ecological ethics that take the question of aesthetic form seriously in the context of art on-and in-the Anthropocene.
Natalie Loveless is an artist, theorist, curator. She is Associate Professor of contemporary art and theory in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Alberta, located in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) on Treaty Six territory (Canada). Her recent books are, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation (Duke University Press, 2019) and Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Research-Creation (University of Alberta Press, 2019).