Picturing the Anthropocene: Landscape, Land Art, and Eco Art

3 units

Without a doubt, questions concerning environmental crisis and the habitability of our planet are among the most pressing of our time. Artists, documentary photographers, and filmmakers alike are tasked with conveying the complexity of these issues to a wider public, mediating between environmental theories of human and nonhuman connection, the decolonial project and human inequalities, and the encoded values of the historical landscape genre. This course will cover the history of 19th-century landscape and its legacy today, the 1960s Land Art movement and its relationship to modern environmentalism, and the nuances of contemporary eco art. In addition, we will go in-depth into some of the most prolific media within eco art, including photography and film, and explore the contemporary debates specific to these fields. Finally, the course concludes with propositional texts from artists and theorists about the future of our planet and our species within it.