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Online webinar / 10 am, 26 February 2025

This webinar shares experimental research from the UKRI-funded Treescapes project, focusing on creative public engagement through the interdisciplinary initiative, Agroforestry Futures. Combining art-anthropology practices with ecological modelling, the research explores new ways of understanding and imagining future landscapes, emphasising the role of embodied experience, creative practices, and innovative data approaches in fostering meaningful connections to place.

The project engages collaborative methods, including filmmaking, collage-making, and embodied practices such as breathwork and shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), alongside archival investigations and youth workshops. These approaches encourage participants to reflect on their relationships with the environment, offering insights beyond conventional research methods.

Theoretically, the artistic research work draws on feminist new materialism concepts like ‘thick time’ and ‘weathering,’ which highlight the interconnectedness of bodies and landscapes and invite attention to temporalities and scale. Complementing these creative approaches, Professor Eigenbrod will present insights from ecological modelling, emphasising big data, spatial scale, and computational methods to situate embodied practices within broader ecological contexts.

Together, these perspectives challenge conventional approaches to environmental stewardship, demonstrating the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and experimentation. By integrating text, sound, and visuals in an experimental format, this presentation showcases how creative and computational methods can deepen understandings of place, reimagine sustainability, and advocate for more inclusive, transformative ways of engaging with the environment.

Presenters

Dr. Jennifer (Jen) Clarke, Associate Professor at Gray’s School of Art, specialises in contemporary art, anthropology, and ecology. With a feminist lens, her work addresses social and ecological concerns in the UK and Japan. She leads interdisciplinary research and international art projects and chairs the Scottish Sculpture Workshop’s Board of Directors.

Felix Eigenbrodis a Professor of Applied Spatial Ecology in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton. A landscape ecologist by training, he is particularly interested in understanding how people can better manage landscapes sustainability to deliver the things we need (food, low carbon energy, clean water) while also maintaining the biodiversity that ultimately sustains us all, all in the face of unprecedented climate and societal change.

His work is highly applied, and targets questions such as where do we focus tree planting in the UK or what are the relative effects of public and private greenspace on mental health. He mostly works with existing ‘big data’, and has strong focus on methods development, and questions of spatial scale, and frequently link computer and statistical models in new ways.

濁ったイメージ、
想像された未来の風景、
アートが新しい未来を形作る。

Turbid images,
Future landscapes imagined,
Art shapes new futures.


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