Environmental degradation. Increasing industrialization and urbanization. Disappearing animal habitats. Raging disease. Scientists, writers, and artists attempting to document and make sense of it. Paris in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a welter of circumstances and conditions that now look very familiar to us. The Benton Museum of Art’s exhibition Parisian Ecologies: The City Transformed in Nineteenth-Century Prints and Drawings argues that the dawn of our current ecological crises can be found in this pivotal era and iconic city, expressed by the art and literature of that time and place. The Parisian Ecologies Symposium on April 8, 2022, expands on this premise, bringing the connections among the humanities, science, and ecology backward and forward through time with the work of leading international artists, scientists, historians and literary scholars.
The daylong conference will include both talks and artistic performances focused on several fundamental questions, including how environmental crises alter the ways we make and interpret art and how the existential threat to humanity impacts the humanities (and vice versa). The symposium will take place in person at the Benton Museum of Art but will also be responsive to current COVID-19 protocols and/or restrictions. Please register prior to the event or upon arrival.
Keynote Events
Olga Kisseleva (Panthéon-Sorbonne University, artist and founder of the Sorbonne’s Art-Science program) will present her time-lapse video, now in the archives of the City of Paris, of a tree that nineteenth-century author François René de Chateaubriand planted next to the Rue de Raspail and that has now fallen victim to climate change.
Yogan Muller (UCLA Design Media Arts), a French photographer and academic, will present a selection of nineteenth-century photographs from the Benton’s collection alongside his contemporary works and will speak on photography and ecological disappearance from the 1800s to today.
Maru Garcia (Prospering backyards, UCLA Art-Science Center) will screen and discuss her work on soil contamination in the Los Angeles area.
Mick Lorusso (Westridge School, UCLA Sci|Art Lab, in-person) and Joel Ong (streaming from: Sensorium:Centre for Digital Art and Technology, York University, Toronto: ) will give a performance on psychogeographical approaches to (bio)locative media.
Dan Finch-Race (University of Bologna), co-editor of French Ecocriticism from the Early Modern Period to the 21stCentury (2017), will speak on pollution in nineteenth-century French paintings.
Co-sponsored by Oldenborg Center for Modern Languages and International Relations, and the Departments of Art History, Romance Languages and Literature, English, and the Environmental Analysis section at Pomona College.
Full Schedule
Thursday, April 7, 2022
9:35am-10:50am Parisian Ecologies Class Section 1 Round Table–Loeb Family Art Pavilion
Friday, April 8, 2022
10:45am Pastries and Coffee–Loeb Family Art Pavilion
11:00 Interdisciplinary Ecologies–Loeb Family Art Pavilion
Claire Nettleton. Welcome.
Robert Gaines (Dean of Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Pomona College). Art and Science as Critical Partners in Times of Change
Char Miller (Pomona College) Nature’s Nations: France, the United States, and the Representation of Space
Dalia Gómez (Pomona College) An Overview of Ecology in Latin American Literature and Film
Claire Nettleton, Academic Curator, Maggie Allegar ‘23, Ansley Ngando ‘24, Jeffrey Pendo ‘24 (Pomona College) Curating Parisian Ecologies
12:20-1:10 Courtyard – Lunch (registration required)
Tours–Meet in Courtyard
1:15-1:45 Tour of Parisian Ecologies with student curators (Ansley Ngando ‘24 and Jeffrey Pendo ‘24)
1:50-2:20 Building and exhibition tour (Claire Nettleton, Academic Curator, and Steve Comba, Associate Director and Registrar)
2:25 Keynote: Yogan Müller (UCLA Design Media Arts), Environmental Photography–Works on Paper Classroom
3:15-3:45 Parisian Ecologies Class Section 2 Round Table–Loeb Family Art Pavilion
4:00–Loeb Family Art Pavilion Eco-Aesthetics–Loeb Family Art Pavilion
Britany Salsbury (Cleveland Museum of Art, video), Etching: The Creative Process
Virginie A. Duzer (Pomona College), ‘Tree, Tree, Tree’ (Three Times Tree)
Karen Quandt (Wabash College), Urban Ecology in Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil
Marion Duquerroy (U. Angers), Contemporary Ecological Art
5:10 Keynote: Dan Finch-Race (U. Bologna), Visceral Geographies of Industrial Air Pollution in Nineteenth-Century Paris–Loeb Family Art Pavilion
5:45-Reception–Courtyard
6:45 Keynote Outdoor Screenings, Artist Talks, and Performances–Courtyard
Introduction by Cherene Sherrard-Johnson (Pomona College)
Olga Kisseleva (Panthéon-Sorbonne University and the Sorbonne’s Art-Science Program Founder). Eden
Maru Garcia (Prospering backyards, UCLA Sci|Art Lab). Put it back. Lead Contamination in Southeast LA
Mick Lorusso (Westridge School, UCLA Sci|Art Lab) and Joel Ong (Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology, York University). Micro-Dérive: A Performance
8pm End
