The Flute & the Bowl
The Oxford Society
for Art and Science
The Flute & the Bowl is an Oxford University society dedicated to the practice of art and ecology. Bringing together a heterogeneous community of practitioners from diverse fields, this society serves as a platform for joint-projects, collaborations, and discussions between the arts, sciences and the humanities, that aim to be of service to the More-than-human World.
As impending environmental crisis adds new urgency to our efforts to extricate ourselves from a cartesian, dualist cosmology that has led us to this ecological dead-end, extricating ourselves will take a collective effort: No one field can claim to hold the solutions to a crisis that is as much cultural and spiritual as it is environmental.
The two key practices of this society feed off of each other to integrate the efforts of artists and scientists in their joint undertaking of transitioning our cultural relationship to the natural world from one of exploitation, disconnect and antagonism to one of reciprocity, interconnection and mutualism.
The Flute & Bowl is currently running the University of Oxford Art, Biodiversity and Climate Network (ABC Network). For ABC Network site click HERE
The Flute & the Bowl aims to serve two key practices:
1. To facilitate collaborative projects between the arts and sciences that would "act as a flute for the natural world," i.e. act as an instrument through which the natural world can communicate itself.
2. To facilitate collaborative projects between the arts and sciences that would "act as a bowl for the natural world," i.e. to hold, protect and conserve the natural world, sharing of it sustainably within our More-than-human communities.
About Us
Anya Gleizer
President and Founder
Eleanor Capstick
Secretary
Katja Lehmann
Ecology Consultant
Thea Stevens
Treasurer &
Climate Society Chair
Jinjoon Lee
Art Consultant
Amillin Hussain
College liaison
Our Team
Current Projects
The Boundary project explores how to teach and learn transformative change, resilience, sustainable behaviour and care for the world in the face of an ecological crisis. This will be done through a series of epistemic dialogues and interactions at the crossroads of art and science leading to the creation of a novel course curriculum reflecting a radical new interdisciplinary pedagogy.
BOUNDARY | PROJECT
The Art, Biodiversity and Climate (ABC) Network is a new initiative by the Flute & Bowl, Oxford Biodiversity and the Oxford ONE Network for Environmental Research. With the help of TORCH and the University of Oxford, the ABC Network will continue the work of the Flute & Bowl in preparation for the COP26 and for the year 2021-2022
The Indigenous Epistemologies Reading Group brings together researchers and students interested in engaging with indigenous perspectives, methodologies and epistemologies in their work and research. This reading group is a weekly gathering in which we critically explore the mechanisms and methods of knowledge production that we engage with in our own research through the lens of indigenous methods of world-knowing and world-making. We share and discuss indigenous scholarship, its intersection with the "western" academy, national politics, and corporate interests. We explore questions of sovereignty, epistemic oppression, relational worldviews and performative knowledge-making.
Indigenous Epistemologies Reading Group
The Flute & Bowl and Mansfield College are hosting a series of creative workshops for students who want to participate in an interdisciplinary program culminating in an exhibition of your work. The series of workshops will be focused on engaging creative methods and nonconformist thinking in your research, creating interdepartmental collaborations, and looking at historic examples of unconventional thinking that led to advances and paradigm shifts in our understanding of our collective world.
Artwork by Katie Holten
Figuring Feasible Futures:
At the Confluence of Art & Science
Cohort 2019-2020
In collaboration with the Oxford Climate Society,
The Flute & the Bowl is offering 18 Ruskin students and 18 science students from across the University of Oxford an opportunity to participate in a joint Art-Science programme dedicated to dreaming forth possible socially just, inclusive, ecological futures and enacting/representing this collective imaginarium through the visual arts. The resulting collaborative art works (in any medium) will be shown in the 6b Arts Center in Paris, France in a group show during the interim between Hilary and Trinity terms. Participants will get to participate in facilitated workshops and retreats free of charge, to help them develop and implement their interdisciplinary projects and create their works of art.
SHOW DELAYED TO JUNE 2021 FOR COVID-19
Events
Society Constitution
Society Code of Conduct
Diversity and Equality Policy
University of Oxford Environmental and Sustainability Policy
Participants
Hannah Nazri
Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Jinjoon Lee
Artist
Amillin Hussain
Urban Development
Méadhbh O'Connor
Artist
Lilygol Sedaghat
Nature, Society, and Environmental Governance
Anya Gleizer
Artist & Ecologist
Eleanor Capstick
Artist
Maya Adams
Environmental Change and Management
Theo Stanley
Environmental Governance
Ming Zee Tee
Jurisprudence
Rupert Stuart-Smith
Geography and Environmental Governance
Imogen Malpas
Medical Anthropology
Rowan Ireland
Artist
Shanley McConnell
Poet & Creative Writer
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Emily Seccombe
Biodiversity, Conservation and Management
Crystal Ma
Artist and Biologist
Zac Cesaro
Engineer
Mi Park
Artist
Rachel Qiu
Geography
Hohee Cho
Historian
Emily Warner
Plant Scientist
James Scott
Artist
Thea Stevens
Geography
Harrison Taylor
Artist
Georgia Crowther
Artist
Leo Geyer
Composer
Willow Senior
Artist
Calder Tsuyuki Tomlinson
Environmental Governance
Katja Lehmann
Aquatic Ecologist and Opera director
Kate Cullen
Water Science & Policy
Tegan O'Hara
Artist
Leonard Magerl
Environmental Change and Management
Bridget Stuart
Psychology
Alice Hackney
Artist
Samuel Gledhill
Economics and Management
Pablo Fernandez Velasco
Cognitive Scientist
Past Projects
The Flute & the Bowl
Art & Science
Art & Climate Change Workshops 2018-19
The Flute & the Bowl
Art & Science
Sponsor Us
At the Flute and the Bowl we are always grateful for your contributions towards our ongoing exhibitions, publications, workshops and projects. If you or your company are interested in supporting our work of bringing art and ecology into the conversation, please drop us a line. We will be here to listen to your contributions and take our collaboration forward into a greener future!
Special Thanks to our Sponsors!
I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it
and vowed,
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through
and then heard
“ring of bone” where
ring is what a
bell does
Lew Welch
"We must learn to behold and hold all this dying and loss, including our own, and still act to preserve and protect what we can." - Bill Plotkin
The Flute the Bowl
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