Past Events



LASA Congress – San Francisco 5-8th May 2022.

Panel Abstract: Rethinking ecology from the Pacific in Chile and Peru

This interdisciplinary panel explores how adopting an ocean-based perspective creates new possibilities for environmental thought in Latin America. Focusing on the Pacific coasts of Chile and Peru, the papers in this panel range in time from the 1950s to the present, and analyze materials including canonical literature, NGO campaigns, and installation art. Recent studies (e.g. Merlinsky and Serafini 2020) have highlighted the crucial role played by artistic practices and collective action in developing a political ecology that accounts for the coloniality and inequality bound up in the Latin American environment. Yet this is a story most often told from the land. This panel follows Hester Blum (2010) and Melody Jue (2020) by suggesting that an oceanic perspective allows new visions of identity, human and nonhuman rights, and the global circulation of environmental knowledge. A perspective from and through the ocean also permits a sharper focus on the problems of extractivism, neocolonialism, and pollution that shape contemporary Chile and Peru. Paul Merchant’s paper identifies these possibilities in contemporary Chilean intermedial art, while Rebecca Irons demonstrates how a campaign linking marine pollution to ceviche and health in Peru encodes social prejudices. Natalia Gándara Chacana explores the institutionalization and globalization of marine extractivism at a Chilean university, while Giulia Champion finds a call for sustainable relations with ocean in recent Peruvian art and music. The panel emerges from the project ‘Reimagining the Pacific: Images of the Ocean in Chile and Peru, c.1960 to the Present’, which has been funded by UK Research and Innovation.

https://lasaweb.org/en/lasa2022/

Dialogues Between Land and Water – Ars Electronica 2021, Paul Merchant
& Catalina Valdés

Listen and observe as researcher Paul Merchant (Lecturer in Latin American Film and Visual Culture at University of Bristol) and art historian/curator Catalina Valdés (expert in art and naturalism of the 19th and 20th century) discuss how art can tell us stories that are different from what has been told from the lens of natural history and geography in relation to the Andes Mountain Range and the Pacific Ocean, creating parallels between the visual invisibility of these natural landmarks and sociocultural notions to delve deeper into the transformational possibilities that the art-ecology duality can offer.

You can watch this discussion here:

https://polygonalforest.cl/path-z

‘An Archipelagic Nation? Ecology and Identity on Chile’s Pacific Coast’ – Talk by Paul Merchant – University of Manchester 27/10/2021

Redrawing the Ocean – 5th November 2021 – Watershed

An event held at the Watershed in Bristol on Friday 5th November 5-6pm. Discussions and a drawing masterclass centred around the question ‘can art help us rethink our relationship to the environment?’ as part of the Watershed’s First Friday series. ‘As the crucial COP26 climate summit takes place in Glasgow, take a moment during First Friday to explore how artists in the UK and in Chile are experimenting with different media to challenge our understanding of the ocean, rivers, lakes and our impact on them’ (Watershed).

This event took place at the Watershed Café & Bar and online.

Creative Environments Workshop

The Brigstow Institute and the Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol present a workshop on the role of creativity in conducting and communicating environmental research. During this one-day event, participants will consider how creative research methods and collaborations between researchers and artists can enrich our understanding of contemporary ecological challenges. Amid growing scholarly interest in art-science collaborations and in transdisciplinary and co-produced research, what can be learned from existing best practice, and what innovations are needed in order to further cultivate ‘arts of attentiveness’ (van Dooren et al., 2016) to our environments? In seeking to answer these questions, the day’s activities will include presentations from academics and local and international artists, and plenty of time for brainstorming and generating new ideas.

Links to padlet materials on creative methods in arts and humanities generated by workshop participants: click here for Our Creative Methods and here for Our Creative Environments.

Cabot Oceans Seminar

Reimagining the Pacific: environmental challenges and the arts of the coasts of Chile and Peru. Part of the Cabot Institute oceans seminar series.

Arte y Ecología en Chile

Fundación Mar Adentro en colaboración con la Universidad de Bristol y el Centro de Cine y Creación (CCC) presentan el ciclo «Arte y Ecología en Chile», la cual pretende abordar el panorama actual del arte ligado a la temática medio ambiental en nuestro país y los desafíos.

CCC, Fundación Mar Adentro y la Universidad de Bristol (Reino Unido) presentan la serie de conversaciones “Arte y Ecología en Chile”, donde artistas y mediadores abordarán los desafíos del arte ecológico para el siglo XXI.  En esta sesión participan los artistas Alejandra Prieto, Claudia González y Fernando Godoy. El ciclo se enmarca en el proyecto “Reimagining the Pacific”, y será moderado por su investigador principal Paul Merchant, profesor de cine y cultura visual latinoamericana de la Universidad de Bristol, UK.

Desde los glaciares hasta el mar… Segundo conversatorio del ciclo ‘Arte y ecología’

CCC – Centro de Cine y Creación, Fundación Mar Adentro y la Universidad de Bristol (Reino Unido) presentan la serie de conversaciones “Arte y Ecología en Chile y Perú”, donde artistas y mediadores abordarán los desafíos del arte ecológico para el siglo XXI. En esta segunda sesión, la conversación girará en torno al agua en sus distintos estados físicos, desde los glaciares hasta el mar. En el marco del actual proceso constituyente en Chile, el manejo del agua se ha vuelto un tema candente, pero la crisis ecológica del presente no respeta fronteras nacionales, y por eso mismo en esta oportunidad incorporamos a artistas peruanos, con el apoyo del MAC Lima. Participan cuatro artistas en cuyas obras el agua es de una importancia clave: Claudia Müller, Denise Lira, Ana Barboza y Rafael Freyre. El ciclo se enmarca en el proyecto “Reimagining the Pacific”, y la conversación será moderada por el investigador Paul Merchant, profesor de cine y cultura visual latinoamericana de la Universidad de Bristol, UK.