"UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA​"

Keywords: climate change, nature, environment, ecosystem

research

Through the exploration of nature and environment, power and society, speculative fiction and eco-criticism, we will dress the limits and possibilities of how arts are able to respond and to challenge the anthropocentric conundrum. We examine our personal and professional engagements with nature, rethink and redefine the concept of human, non-human, animal, and vegetal. During this class, we place equal weight on critical theory and artistic creation, develop ideas and fluency. We will observe our relationship with nature, our engagement with ecology, our psychosocial impacts of climate change (eg. scepticisme, denial, critical rejection, anxiety, indifference, panic...).

during the classes, activities will involve

  • Theory
Presentation, discussions (based on readings, life experience, self-examination), screenings and readings from texts by writers, theorists, artists...
  • Thematic experience
Ritual, ceremony, promenade, multi-sensorial experience, hiking...
  • Practice
Performance, dance, movement research, acting, puppet theater, narrating and composing through structured-improvisation and movement; developing scores for solo and group choreographies; creative writing in different form (poetry, manifest, comics, diary...) making exercises and creative tasks in different medium (drawing, paining, collage, video, photo, installation art, multimedia art...), searching through storytelling, personal narratives, historical material, archives and divers audiovisual resources...
  • Fieldwork
In an ecovillage, forest, garden, greenhouse, garden...

final public showing

Students have regularly possibility to organize public presentations (performances, public space intervention...), showings (pop-up exhibitions, screenings, discussions, talks...), participative group experiences (ceremonies, rituals, promenades, celebrations...) and many other public forms to share their works, test their ideas, present their process.