Climate Change’s Representational Calamity

Emily Eliza Scott is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, and former park ranger. Her work focuses on contemporary art and design practices that engage pressing ecological and/or geopolitical issues. Currently a postdoctoral fellow in the architecture department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), she teaches on subjects ranging from the concept of “post-nature,” to architecture “in the expanded field,” to the emergent physical and imaginative geographies of climate change. Her writings have appeared in Avery, Art Journal, American Art, Third Text and Cultural Geographies as well as multiple edited volumes and online journals. Her first book, Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics, coedited with Kirsten Swenson, was published by UC Press last year. She is a founding member of two long-term, collaborative projects: World of Matter (2011-), an international art and research platform on global resource ecologies, and the Los Angeles Urban Rangers (2004-), a group that develops guided hikes, campfire talks, field kits, and other interpretive tools to spark creative explorations of everyday habitats in their home megalopolis and beyond.

A post-lecture reception will be held in the Williamson Gallery.

The ArtCenter Dialogues, a lecture series made possible by a generous endowment from the Toyota Motor Corporation, brings eminent speakers to the College from a wide variety of art, design and educational backgrounds to inspire creativity and thoughtful discussion, and to broaden perspectives.

In the 2015-2016 year, ArtCenter will be celebrating its 85th anniversary and the Humanities & Sciences department has decided to mark this occasion by asking questions of our future. The Future Ecologies series engages the critical and imaginative futures we as a species face by considering the rapidly changing natural and technological environments of our contemporary world. The series also coincides with the Williamson Gallery Spring 2015 exhibition: Urbanature – New Representations of the Natural (Feb 18-May 8).