Curated by School for Transformation and in
collaboration with AILThis talk will address the question of transdisciplinary research between art, science,
and the humanities through the work of the
Synthetic Collective. SC works together
to sample, map, understand, and visualize the complexities of plastics and micro-plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region.
Crucial to this research methodology is the driving principle that artists and scientists conduct research together, from
the outset of the inquiry. Additionally, I will also present some questions drawing from my ongoing collaboration with a person
who works in a plastic cup factory, and my theorization of plastic, to think through what these collective practices might
effect, and how knowledge is made differently when it is produced together.
Heather
Davis is an assistant professor of Culture and Media at the New School. She is the co-editor of
Art in the Anthropocene:
Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments, and Epistemologies and editor of the award-winning collection
Desire
Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada. Her most recent book,
Plastic Matter (Duke UP, 2022), re-examines
materiality in light of plastic’s saturation. Davis is a member of the Synthetic Collective, an interdisciplinary team of
scientists, humanities scholars, and artists, who investigate and make visible plastic pollution in the Great Lakes.
Monika Halkort is assistant professor and head of the Art x Science School for Transformation at the University
of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research and teaching focus on the political ecology of transformation processes, emphasising,
in particular, the role of bio/geo-chemical substances and materials in mediating historical (in)justice and change.
About the series and information about all lecturesSchool
for TransformationAIL
Kommender Termin der Serie:
24.06.2025,
18:00 Uhr, Miya Yoshida: Transvaluation: Reclaiming Time
