The BOUNDARY PROJECT
Living within a Bounded World
A collaboration between the University of Oxford & UdK Berlin
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. Led through a series of epistemic dialogues and interactions at the crossroads of art and science the partner organizations Oxford University's Flute&Bowl and UdK Berlin will collaborate to create a novel course curriculum reflecting a radical new interdisciplinary pedagogy.
The Boundary Project begins as a seed-project that works towards developing the much more ambitious goal of a taught undergraduate course in Art and Science, built on a curriculum that facilitates the construction of the sustainable communities of our collective future, both ecologically and socially.
During the seeding phase of the project we explore collaboratively what is needed to develop an educational system that helps students to
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go beyond the societal and psychological boundaries that we currently encounter when trying to adopt more sustainable lifestyles.
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understand which natural boundaries have to be respected when seeking solutions for the impending ecological and societal crises
From January 2022, we invited science and art educators/researchers from different backgrounds and different institutions to come together in a series of 4 online workshops to engage in interdisciplinary exchanges related to the climate crisis and its impact on human and non-human life. We explored current limitations when teaching art and science subjects in regard to the impending ecological crisis and its social components (such as displacement of communities, loss of habitat and water/food scarcity).
We also explored what tools, techniques and knowledge future generations of students need in order to build the world’s future communities on a sustainable, equitable and just foundation. Specifically, what role do the creative humanities play in this process? How can the arts guide the way in envisioning how ecological communities can co-exist with human-dominated living spaces?
The workshops culminated in a hybrid symposium in May 2022, an artist residency programme in July 2022 and finally, an exhibition in November 2022, bringing the year to its close.
The final show for the 2022 run of the Boundary Project brings together the responses of 9 artists who participated in the Programme reflecting on 5 aspects of Boundaries we are forced to confront when contemplating long-term sustainable living :
1. Energy
2. Water
3. Soil
4. Food
5. Transfer of material and information