Conference | After the Spectacular Image: Art, Architecture, and the Media of Climate Change

After the Spectacular Image: Art, Architecture, and the Media of Climate Change
Princeton University School of Architecture
February 11-12, 2016 / Betts Auditorium
More information: http://www.princeton.edu/pei/events/asi/index.xml

Global environmental pressures solicit not only technological and policy innovations, but also social transformations. Over the past century, image making and visualization practices – in the arts, literature, and the sciences – have formed a cultural infrastructure focused on the relationship between humans, other species, and their environments. Images have, in numerous ways, impacted political and cultural debates about nature, environment, and climate.

At the same time, new challenges have emerged: given that the processes producing changes to the climate are slow and agglomerative, and resist familiar forms of representation, scholars of art, architecture, and media have explored new analytic methods and historical narratives. The cultural imaginary of the relationship between these processes and systems is thus also in transition, and can be critically evaluated for the visions of the future such representations contain.

After the Spectacular Image will bring together a group of prominent scholars to examine the rich history of representing climate and its effects.

Organized by Daniel A. Barber, Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities, Princeton Environmental Institute and Princeton University School of Architecture.

• Emily Apter, Chair of Comparative Literature, New York University
• T. J. Demos, Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz
• Orit Halpern, Associate Prof. of Sociology at Concordia University
• Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Harvard University
• Reinhold Martin, Professor of Architecture, Columbia University
• Felicity Scott, Associate Professor of Architecture, Columbia University
• McKenzie Wark, Professor of Culture and Media Studies, The New School
• Kathryn Yusoff, Senior Lecturer in Geography, Queen Mary, University of London
• Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

Thursday, February 11

4:30PM - 4:40PM | Opening Remarks

• Daniel Barber, Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities, Princeton Environmental Institute and School of Architecture

4:30PM - 6:30PM | Panel 1

• Kathryn Yusoff, Senior Lecturer in Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, "Geomorphic Aesthetics, a New Epoch of Thought and the Anthropocene"
• T. J. Demos, Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz, "The Arts of Climate Change"
• Reinhold Martin Professor of Architecture, Columbia University, "Risk: Excerpts from the Environmental Division of Labor"

Moderated by Karl Kusserow, Princeton University Art Museum

Friday, February 12

9:30AM - 11:00AM | Panel 2

• Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, "Photography After the Human"
• Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Harvard University, "Inversion"

Moderated by Rachel DeLue, History of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University

11:30PM - 1:00PM | Panel 3

• Emily Apter, Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature, New York University, "Overburden: The Language of Mining and Data Mining in the Digital Humanities"
• Orit Halpern, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, "Apocalyptic Hope: Infrastructure, Speculation, and 'Smartness'"

Moderated by Bruno Carvalho, Spanish and Portuguese and Urban Studies, Princeton University

2:00PM - 4:00PM | Panel 4

• McKenzie Wark, Professor of Culture and Media Studies, The New School for Social Research, "Climate Science as Sensory Infrastructure"
• Felicity Scott, Associate Professor of Architecture, Columbia University, "Securing Adjustable Climate"

Moderated by Emily Thompson, History of Science, Princeton University

4:15PM - 4:45PM | Concluding Discussion

Moderated by William Gleason, Professor of English, Princeton University

After the Spectacular Image is co-sponsored by the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University School of Architecture, the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities, and the Program in Media and Modernity.