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The Art, Biodiversity & Climate (ABC) Network is a new Network within TORCH, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, launched in 2021.
The climate crisis, the collapse of our planet’s biodiversity and growing social inequality are crises that are inherently and inextricably linked. As social awareness of the interdependency of human culture and natural systems grows, new urgency is added to our efforts to extricate ourselves from extractivist habits and mind-sets that have led us to this ecological dead-end. While we have long recognized the need to change the way we think about and relate to our environments, in practice, the shift has proven difficult.
Not only does policy lag behind the science, but our cosmologies, stories and “picturings” of the natural world have struggled to catch up and provide us with alternative ways to perceive and therefore act in the world. This challenge calls for a radical 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 Art, Biodiversity, and Climate Network (ABC Network) brings together members of the Oxford ONE network, the Biodiversity Network, the Oxford Climate Research Network and The Flute & Bowl: Oxford Art and Science to bridge the gap that separates the Humanities Division (and, more specifically, the arts, music, performance and dance) from the crucial research into conserving our planetary support systems taking place in the MPLS Division. This network engages creative practitioners and researchers to build a new common imaginarium of the world as-it-could-be, transcending academic disciplinary boundaries and short-term political incentives.
Bringing together a heterogeneous community of practitioners from diverse fields across the divisions (Social science, Humanities and MPLS), the ABC Network facilitates joint-projects, collaborations, and discussions between the arts, sciences and the humanities, that do not only aim to illustrate new research, but to integrate creative methods into the process of knowledge-making itself. The ABC Network was created to develop visionary approaches to protect and advocate for the More-than-Human World.
The ABC Network takes inspiration from the Flute & Bowl in its two key aims:
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
Artist & Ecologist
Tristram walsh
Climate Science Researcher
MAYA ADAMS
Artist and Social Scientist
Cecile Girardin
Tropical Ecology Researcher
Katja Lehmann
Microbial Ecologist & Artist
Alice hackney
Artist
Jinjoon Lee
Artist
Hannah Nazri
Medical Researcher
Kaya axelsson
Net-Zero Researcher
Pablo fernández
Philosopher
Chris Thorogood
Plant Scientist and Artist
Eleanor capstick
Artist
Our Team
Current Projects
ABC Network
Art | Science Artist Residency Program
5 artists from the Ruskin School of Art are invited to take up a term-long, 8 week residency within 5 Oxford lab or research groups from within the Biodiversity and ONE Networks (Oxford Networks of the Environment) to create work at the crossroads of art and science.
If selected, you and your lab group will work together to develop a piece of artwork for the COP26 to be shown in Glasgow in November 2021 at the world climate change summit.
The fully funded residency programme is run by the ABC network (TORCH). We will help develop your collaboration with weekly workshops (open to both artists and scientists), talks, and one-to-one consultations with the 5 selected artists, to guide the artist-scientist partnerships into developing effective, impactful work that will contribute to our fight against climate chaos and in understanding the social, cultural, psychological, spiritual or political contexts of your lab group’s research in a way that communicates on an emotive, intuitive level.
For Application information and to APPLY, please follow the link below, and send us your application by 11:59PM Sunday March 21st
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
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
Events
Diversity and Equality Policy
Constitution
Code of Conduct
Environmental and Sustainability Policy
Past Projects
The Flute & the Bowl
Art & Science
Art & Climate Change Workshops 2018-19
