Eco-aesthetics

This course examines a movement in contemporary art and visual culture – termed “eco-aesthetics” – that works to raise awareness of global climate change and to resist forces of environmental degradation. We will begin by tracing a history of emerging artistic-ecological consciousness in the US and Europe in the 1960s and 70s, and then take a more global, interdisciplinary look at shifting methods of photographic, filmic, and new media documentation and representations of a “post-natural” landscape in the Anthropocene Age. We will analyze collective eco-aesthetic activism in the 21st century, exploring artistic collaborations in various local, regional, and global contexts.