AGAINST EXTINCTION: A Symposium, Festival, and Proposition

Image: Film still from The Magician (The De-Extinct Project) by Justine Blau

29 June, 2024 | Day program: 10:00-17:00; walk-ins, walk-throughs welcome | Evening program: doors open at 19:30; performances begin at 20:00 | Location: Gasthuis Leeuwenbergh, Servaasbolwerk 1a, Utrecht

NB: OSL students can obtain 1EC from the Day Program as follows:
– Registering by sending an email to neh@uu.nl (see below) AND osl@rug.nl;
– Preparing for the symposium by reading the two articles listed below, and participating in the Day Program;
– Submitting a short text (800-1000 words) to osl@rug.nl before July 31st end of day, reflecting on how artistic research can contribute to scholarly conceptualizations of the environmental crisis, bringing in examples encountered at this symposium.

Preparatory readings:
O’Key, Dominic. “Extinction in Public: Thinking through the Sixth Mass Extinction, Environmental Humanities, and Extinction Studies”. Environmental Humanities, vol. 15, no. 1, 2023, pp. 168–186. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216228
Knight, Linda. “Inefficiently mapping extinction: A research-creation, practice-led approach to visualising biodiversity loss”. Research in Education, vol. 117, no. 1, 2023, pp. 11-25. https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237231200623

 

As the year turns on the Summer Solstice, we will take one last stand “against dying of the light,” in the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ words, through a day-long program co-organized by the Utrecht Network for Environmental HumanitiesMooie Woorden  the Gasthuis Leeuwenbergh foundation, and the NWO Veni project “Poetry in the Age of Global English.” This symposium/festival/proposition explores how art, in the broadest sense, can fight against various forms of extinction, whether it is the disappearance of a species, an ecosystem, a language or cultural heritage. The location, the Gasthuis Leeuwenbergh, is particularly significant for this program, as the historic plague house. This space that housed illness and death also, of course, housed various forms of communal caregiving. We will foreground this particular history of the building as inspiration for producing – through poetry, music, film, other forms of presentations, as well as interactive discussions – collective visions for sustainable futures. What are the ways that health, community, even creative beauty can emerge from and endure beyond a widespread climate of unrest and anxiety?

The day program, free and open to the public, is educationally-oriented, featuring participatory workshops (including creative writing, eco-printing, foraging), short talks by university researchers, art installations and performances, an immersive VR documentary, and open discussions. Presenters include: scholars Sara Bédard-Goulet, Kári Driscoll, Mara Facon, Susanne Ferwerda, and Mia You from Utrecht University; poets Ghayath Almadhoun and Ricardo Domeneck; artist Justine Blau; writers/musicians Bram Ieven and Aafke Romeijn; director Marieke Nooren and the Gouden Haas performance group; and filmmakers Jongsma+O’Neill. (A detailed schedule for the day program will be available soon on the NEH website; please register and stay up-to-date by emailing neh@uu.nl.)

The evening program, which is presented by the indomitable Utrecht literary platform Mooie Woorden, features interviews, readings and performances by Nikki Dekker, Sara Eelen, hiphop collective Vudu Cru and more TBA. Tickets are available on the Mooie Woorden site; those who register for the day program through neh@uu.nl will receive a 50% discount code.

 

Please note: The programs will be multilingual, in Dutch and English among other tongues, because we’re also against monocultures!