Lenore Manderson: Earth, Itself: Art, science and conceptualizing the future

Swiss TPH

Abstract:
Climate change embraces a unique breadth of scholarship. Planetary science, evolutionary biology and geology, the social and policy sciences and humanities, come together as a diverse bundle of knowledge systems, and their interaction is at the core understanding of comprehending global warming and rapid planetary change, and to avert continuing and escalating catastrophe.  We are on the edge of this now. For the past five years, I have curated and produced an art/science program, as Earth, Itself (2015-2019) at Brown University in the US, and as Watershed (2018) at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The programs brought together scholars from these diverse fields with practicing artists. This was structured through using early understandings of earth systems and bodies, across cultures, time and place, in terms of the elements (and so: earth/dance, air/music, fire/the fire arts, water/text). In this presentation, I will turn to art works produced for Earth, Itself and Watershed to illustrate how art can change perception and create a sense of possibility. Drawing onvideo clips, sound bites, stills and text , I consider how artists draw on scientific work and challenge paradigms, and how this works to provoke us to think of ways forward to protect both the environment and health.

Bionote:
Lenore Manderson is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology in the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, and previous held professorial positions at Monash, Melbourne and Queensland Universities in Australia. She is known internationally for her research, publishing and education  on inequality and the social context of infectious and chronic disease, as a researcher. She has extensive advisory experience, particularly since 1988 with the Special Programme in Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR). She is editor of the journal Medical Anthropology. From May 2014-May 2019 she was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Environmental Science, Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES), where her work focused on art/science intersections on climate change; she continues to teach in association with Brown and IE (Madrid) on biodiversity and social innovation. She played a lead role in the Australian Academy of Science project, Australia 2050, on population, equity, climate change and sustainability, and was awarded the Society of Medical Anthropology Career Achievement Award in 2016 in acknowledgement of her career-long contributions to theory and method.  See lenoremanderson.com

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