An online double-seminar organized by Ph.D. Candidate Zoe Weldon-Yochim and History of Art and Visual Culture Professor T. J. Demos, “Nuclear Nows: Contemporary Art, Radiation, and Militarized Ecologies” brings together interdisciplinary researchers and artists focused on radiation and militarized ecologies in relation to art, visual culture, and socio-environmental troubles. The two panels comprising the event invite productively entangled ways of thinking about the enduring presence of atomic violence from perspectives of and beyond the arts, reaching out to the many material, social, technological, and political networks that sustain the ongoing toxic features of the nuclear age. Each session will invite much-needed conversation among our specialist speakers from various disciplines and institutions about what role art and visuality can play in considering nuclear urgencies, contradictions, and indeterminacies.
"Nuclear Nows: Contemporary Art, Radiation, and Militarized Ecologies" is organized by the Center of Creative Ecologies at UC Santa Cruz. The event has received generous support from UC Santa Cruz's Arts Research Institute and the Institute of the Arts & Sciences.
ADMISSION
• Free and open to the public
• Attend online -- Please register for each event separately.
• Panel One: Tues, March 5, 2:00–4:00 p.m. PST
• Panel Two: Tues, March 12, noon–2:00 p.m. PST
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
Panel One: Tues, March 5
Registration Link
The first panel of “Nuclear Nows: Contemporary Art, Radiation, and Militarized Ecologies,” held Tuesday, March 5, 2024, from 2 pm to 4pm PST on Zoom, features presentations by Karen Barad (Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz), Jessica Hurley (Assistant Professor of English and affiliate faculty in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Cultural Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University), and Zoe Weldon-Yochim (Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a 2023-24 Luce/ ACLS Dissertation Fellow in American Art). With attention placed on the intersections of science, technology, temporality, and cultural studies, the talks are meant to initiate discussion between the panelists and audience, with ample room for Q&A following the presentations.
Panel one is moderated by T.J. Demos, an award-winning writer on contemporary art, global politics, and ecology. He is Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Founder and Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies.
Panel Two: Tues, March 12
Registration Link
The second session of “Nuclear Nows: Contemporary Art, Radiation, and Militarized Ecologies,” held Tuesday, March 5, 2024, from 12 pm to 2 pm PST on Zoom, consists of presentations by Susan Schuppli (Professor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London, where she is also an affiliate artist-researcher and Board Chair of Forensic Architecture), Will Wilson (Diné photographer and trans-customary artist, and Associate Professor of Photography and Media at the University of Texas at Austin), and Melanie K. Yazzie (Bilagáana/Diné; Assistant Professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and co-host and producer of the “Red Power Hour” podcast). The session will spotlight nuclear colonialisms, artist-activist engagements with uranium mining, and the transnational scale of nuclearity, followed by Q&A
Panel two is moderated by Zoe Weldon-Yochim, Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a 2023-24 Luce/ ACLS Dissertation Fellow in American Art.
image credit: Schuppli, Susan. Still from Trace Evidence (2016).