The Sixth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature, GLOBAL ECOLOGIES – LOCAL IMPACTS Environment & Culture, & New Zealand (ASLEC-ANZ) in collaboration with the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI)

This conference will explore the interactions and tensions between local and Wireless details: global spheres of environmental change. In the process we hope to Logon: GEC encourage new dialogues, collaborations and projects between the Password: 39600063 different sub-disciplines that make up our burgeoning and evolving fields of study WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2016 ------

CONFERENCE CONVENORS HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY

SYDNEY ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE | 8.30 – 9.00 REGISTRATION Iain McCalman 9.00 – 9.30 OPENING ADDRESS: IAIN MCCALMAN, David Schlosberg SYDNEY ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE

Association for the Study of Literature, Environment & Culture, Australia & 9.30 – 10.30 INAUGURAL ASLEC–ANZ JUDITH WRIGHT LECTURE: New Zealand PROFESSOR DEBORAH BIRD ROSE, UNIVERSITY OF NSW Linda Williams, RMIT University Two Laws: Steps Toward Decolonisation in the Shadow of Grace Moore, University of Melbourne the Anthropocene Jennifer Hamilton, University of Sydney Chair: THOM VAN DOOREN

ARTISTS’ ROUNDTABLE Joshua Wodak, University of NSW Dominic Redfern, RMIT University 10.30 – 11.00 MORNING TEA

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WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.)

11.00 – 12.30 SESSIONS ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY HOLME BUILDING—SUTHERLAND HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN ROOM WOOLLEY BUILDING—LEVEL 2, ROOM ROOM S226 (MECO) SESSION 1: Narratives of SESSION 2: Time Journeys—Mapping SESSION 3: Writing Ecology: Mind, SESSION 4: Indigenous Writing and Displacement and Destruction the Anthropocene Society, Environment Environmental Imaginaries

Chair: IAIN MCCALMAN Chair: DEBBIE SYMONS Chair: ANDREW DENTON Chair: GRACE MOORE

FIONA MILLER, MACQUARIE SUSANNA COLLINSON & STEPHEN GURPREET KAUR, UNIVERSITY OF ROSE HSIU-LI JUAN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY: TURNER — UNIVERSTY OF AUCKLAND, WARWICK, COVENTRY, ENGLAND: CHUNG HSING UNIVERSITY, Climate-related displacement as NEW ZEALAND The Bodily Registers of Women and TAIWAN: adaptation: shadow places and the Unmapping: Pixelated Geographies Water in Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra Environmental Imaginary and negotiation of risk Indigenous Knowledge in Alexis MARIA MELO ZURITA, MACQUARIE BARBARA HOLLOWAY, AUSTRALIAN Wright's Carpentaria: An Animist IAN COLLINSON, : NATIONAL UNIVERSITY: Ontological Perspective UNIVERSITY: A Journey into the Subterranean ‘It’s Not Like Forcing a Horse to Face a Hail Ruin, Hail Destruction: Extreme Anthropocene Hailstorm’: Examining the Framings of JIM FAIRHALL, DE PAUL UNIVERSITY, metal in the Anthropocene Global Dilemmas CHICAGO: Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremonies and DEBORAH JORDAN, MONASH JESSICA WHITE, UNIVERSITY OF Stories as Agents of Indigenous UNIVERSITY: QUEENSLAND: Ecological Identity Climate Change Narratives in Ecobiography: Decentring the Human Australian Fiction in Life Writing

12.30 – 1.30 LUNCH ------

WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.) ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY GLOBAL ECOLOGIES – LOCAL IMPACTS

1.30 – 2.15 KEYNOTE: JOHN WOLSELEY, ARTIST Art about the environment: what's the point? Wireless details: Chair: DEBBIE SYMONS Logon: GEC Password: 39600063 2.15 – 3.00 KEYNOTE: ALICE TE PUNGA SOMERVILLE Somewhere the sea Chair: ANDREW DENTON THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2016

------3.00 – 3.30 AFTERNOON TEA ------HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY

8.30 – 9.00 REGISTRATION

HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY 9.00 – 9.45 KEYNOTE: ELIZABETH DE LOUGHREY, UCLA Submarine Futures of the Anthropocene Chair: ANNA BOSWELL 3.30 – 4.15 KEYNOTE: JONI ADAMSON, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY Backbone, Country, Anthropocene: Integrating Knowledges, 9.45 – 10.30 KEYNOTE: PETRA TSCHAKERT, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN Forging New Constellations of Humanities and Social Science AUSTRALIA Practice The “resilient citizen”: increasing inequalities and intangible loss Chair: IAIN MCCALMAN Chair: DAVID SCHLOSBERG

10.30 – 11.00 MORNING TEA 4.15 – 5.15 ASLEC-ANZ ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (OPTIONAL)

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5.30 – 7.30 WELCOME RECEPTION—HOLME BUILDING (OPTIONAL)

THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2016

11.00 – 12.30 SESSIONS

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HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY HOLME BUILDING—SUTHERLAND HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN ROOM WOOLLEY BUILDING—LEVEL 2, ROOM ROOM S226 (MECO) SESSION 1: PANEL |Aotearoa New SESSION 2: Beyond Simply Fishing: SESSION 3: PANEL | Art, Ecology and SESSION 4: Postgrad/ECR Zealand: Indigenous knowledges, Conservation, Construction and Governance–Intercreate Workshop—Pathways in the mātauranga Māori sciences and cross- Communities Environmental Humanities cultural conversations

Chair: GRACE MOORE Chair: DEBBIE SYMONS Chair: NIGEL HELYER Chair: ALANNA MYERS

JOSH WODAK, UNIVERSITY OF • MICHELLE MALONEY & ILKA BLUE CONVENORS: • HUHANA SMITH (Ngāti Tukorehe, NSW: NELSON: N ew governance models for • ALANNA MYERS, UNIVERSITY OF Ngāti Raukawa ki Te Tonga), MASSEY The Life (and Death) Aquatic: bio-regional health: Green Prints and MELBOURNE & UNIVERSITY, WELLINGTON, NEW Conservation Biology and the role of Law and Art • EMMA DAVIES, AUSTRALIAN ZEALAND: The practice of cross- Environmental Engineering in Artificial NATIONAL UNIVERSITY cultural restoration and concentrated Coral Reefs • SANDY SUR, THOMAS DICK & LEAH dialogue and engagement between BARCLAY: Vanuatu Water Music, PANELLISTS: Western sciences and customary LI CHEN, EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY: techn ology and cultural/decolonising - IAIN MCCALMAN, UNIVERSITY OF ecological and cultural knowledge On Material Engagement with Nature: politics SYDNEY embodied in mātauranga Māori Rethinking the Construction of - THOM VAN DOOREN, UNIVERSITY Diasporic Space Through the Case of • TRACEY BENSON: TransArts Alliance OF NSW • OCEAN MERCIER, (Te Kawa a Māui) Western Australia's Abalone - JONI ADAMSON, ARIZONA STATE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF UNIVERSITY WELLINGTON: A Conversation about KATE JOHNSTON, UNIVERSITY OF Māori Ecology, Biotechnology and SYDNEY: Wasps Beings in Flux: sustaining local and global ‘fish - human communities’

12.30 – 1.30 LUNCH

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THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.)

1.30 – 3.00 SESSIONS ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE HOLME BUILDING— HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN WOOLLEY BUILDING—LEVEL WOOLLEY BUILDING —Level REFECTORY SUTHERLAND ROOM ROOM 2, ROOM S226 (MECO) 4 COMMON ROOM SESSION 5: People–Law, SESSION 6: Experiments with SESSION 7: Digital Worlds, SESSION 8: Close Encounters: ARTISTS' ROUNDTABLE— Environment–War Bodies, Plants & Building Digital Futures Multispecies Studies Above and ECOLOGICAL IMAGINARIES Materials Below the Earth

Chair: CA CRANSTON Chair BARBARA HOLLOWAY Chair: ALANNA MYERS Chair: GRACE MOORE CONVENORS:

MICHELLE MALONEY, LAURA FISHER, UNIVERSITY OF JESSICA MCLEAN, MACQUARIE ANNA BOSWELL, UNIVERSITY • JOSH WODAK, UNIVERSITY AUSTRALIAN EARTH LAWS SYDNEY: UNIVERSITY: OF AUCKLAND: OF NSW & ALLIANCE: The poetics of foraging: an Digital spaces and justice in the Dark Arks and Extinction • DOMINIC REDFERN, RMIT Next generation environmental account of Diego Bonito and Anthropocene Pedagogy UNIVERSITY law or echoes of 1984? Artist as Family

Regulating consumption and living within our ecological limits REBECCA GIGGS, MACQUARIE BENJAMIN ABRAHAM, LAURA MCLAUCHLAN, UNIVERSITY; JENNIFER MAE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF NSW: BOI HUYEN NGO, UNIVERSITY HAMILTON, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: Care Wars: making space for OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY SYDNEY/NYU SYDNEY; The Videoga me Terraforming careful conversations in species In the Rivers: The haunting of ASTRIDA NEIMANIS, Imaginary conservation practices Agent Orange for Vietnamese UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY; KATE Australians WRIGHT, UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND; TESSA ZETTEL, INDEPENDENT ARTIST The Weathering Report: Notes from the Field

3.00 – 3.30 AFTERNOON TEA ------

THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.)

SESSION 3.30 – 5.00PM ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE HOLME BUILDING— HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN WOOLLEY BUILDING—LEVEL WOOLLEY BUILDING —Level REFECTORY SUTHERLAND ROOM ROOM 2, ROOM S226 (MECO) 4 COMMON ROOM SESSION 1: PANEL | Water SESSION 11: Art and Culture in SESSION 12: Educating for SESSION 13: Postcolonial ARTISTS' ROUNDTABLE— imaginaries: multidisciplinary an Anthropocene Climate Change Ecocriticism: Myths, Concepts ECOLOGICAL and multispecies perspectives and Challenges TRANSFORMATIONS

Chair: HOLLIS TAYLOR Chair: BARBARA HOLLOWAY Chair: CA CRANSTON Chair: ANDREW DENTON CONVENORS:

• NICOLE MATTHEWS, & JANE PRUDENCE GIBSON, BLANCHE HIGGINS, MONASH MICHAEL GRIMSHAW, • JOSH WODAK, UNIVERSITY SIMON — MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY OF NSW: UNIVERSITY: UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY, OF NSW & UNIVERSITY: The Hawkesbury Hybrid Green Man: the Image Hope, ‘humanity’ and the CHRISTCHURCH, NEW • DOMINIC REDFERN, RMIT on a chocolate box: from of the Wild Green Man as Anthropocene ZEALAND: Mangroves and Berowra backyard to Ecological Warning Mudflats: The North Island UNIVERSITY Instagram SIMON LUMSDEN, UNIVERSITY Myth? SARAH PIRRIE, CHARLES OF NSW: • JANE ULMAN: Sweet Water, DARWIN UNIVERSITY: Veganism, Normative Change ARKA MONDAL, NATIONAL Salt Water, Sacred Sites Sea of Runoff — the creative and Second Nature UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE: problematisation of Investigating Eco-(in)justice: • EMILY O’GORMAN, anthropogenic objects EMILIA DE LA SIENRA, Subaltern identities and Nature MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY: UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY in Amitav Ghosh’s Fictions Histories of wetlands, birds, SYDNEY: mosquitos and people in the Worldviews as virtual realities Murray-Darling Basin hiding the potential of human behaviour: a fundamental construct for the fulfilment of the goals of the Education for Sustainable Development

------HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY 5.00 – 6.00: POSTGRAD SLAM—FIVE MINUTES WITH … CONVENOR: MARIE MCKENZIE, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY MODERATOR: IAIN MCCALMAN, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.) GLOBAL ECOLOGIES – LOCAL IMPACTS

CONFERENCE DINNER – HOLME BAR Wireless details: 6.00 – LATE Logon: GEC Password: 39600063 WITH LIVE MUSIC BY ‘CHARCOAL’

FRIDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2016

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HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY

8.30 – 9.00 REGISTRATION

9.00 – 9.45 KEYNOTE: RICHARD KERRIDGE Ecocriticism's Practical Challenges for Writers

Sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions

Chair: IAIN MCCALMAN

9.45 – 10.30 KEYNOTE: JAMES BRADLEY Storytelling in the Anthropocene

Chair: DAVID SCHLOSBERG

10.30 – 11.00 MORNING TEA ------

FRIDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.)

11.00 – 12.30 SESSION ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE HOLME BUILDING— HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN WOOLLEY BUILDING—LEVEL WOOLLEY BUILDING —Level REFECTORY SUTHERLAND ROOM ROOM 2, ROOM S226 (MECO) 4 COMMON ROOM SESSION 10: PANEL Human– SESSION 2: Global Songs of SESSION 3: Transforming SESSION 4: Theatre of the SESSION 5: Ecological Nonhuman Animal Relations— Ice and Snow: Antarctica in the Waterways: Creeks and Rivers Climate Metaphor Imaginaries: City and Country Exploring the Boundaries Narrative World on Two Continents

Chair: IAIN MCCALMAN Chair: GRACE MOORE Chair: JOSH WODAK Chair: DOMINIC REDFERN Chair: ANDREW DENTON

• THOM VAN DOOREN, ELIZABETH LEANE, UNIVERSITY TILLY HINTON, UNIVERSITY OF AJUMEZE HENRY OBI, ROD GIBLETT: UNIVERSITY OF NSW: OF TASMANIA: TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY: UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN, A City and Its Wetlands: From Provisioning Crows: Ecologies of Global Plot, Local Action: Ice The give and take of solace in SOUTH : Aztec City to Mexico City— Hope in the Mariana Islands and the Antarctic (Eco)thriller ecological transformation The 'Theatre of the Bloody Homage to Eduardo Galeano, Metaphor’: The Bio - politics of 1940 – 2015 • HOLLIS TAYLOR, MACQUARIE HANNE NIELSEN, UNIVERSITY CATHERINE VAN Violence in the Theatre of the UNIVERSITY: Australian Avian OF TASMANIA: WILGENBURG, LIVING Niger Delta CAMILLE ROULIÈRE, Artists and the Discourse and Melting Ice: Representations of COLOUR STUDIO & ROB UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE: Politics of Human Antarctica in Advertising YOUL, LANDCARE AUSTRALIA HELEN RAMOUTSAKI, JAMES Love thy River: Ecopoetic Place- Exceptionalism (VIDEO): COOK UNIVERSITY: Making in Murray River JUAN FRANCISCO SALAZAR, Completing the Revegetation of Here and now not once upon a Country (Murray-Darling Basin) WESTERN SYDNEY the Moonee Ponds Creek time and far away: bringing UNIVERSITY: the climate-world home with Speculative narratives of BROGAN BUNT, LUCAS IHLEIN cyclonic force worlds to come in Antarctica & KIM WILLIAMS—UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG: CAMILLA FLODIN, UPPSALA Walking Upstream: Waterways UNIVERSITY, UPPSALA, of the Illawarra SWEDEN: Art and Nature in Hölderlin

12.30 – 1.30 LUNCH ------

FRIDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.)

1.30 – 3.00 SESSION ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY HOLME BUILDING—SUTHERLAND HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN ROOM WOOLLEY BUILDING—LEVEL 2, ROOM ROOM S226 (MECO)

SESSION 6: Transformative Discourse: SESSION 7: Ecological Histories of SESSION 8: Indigenous Knowledge and SESSION 9: PANEL | COMPOSTING— The Power of Coal Philosophy the Governance of Climate Change Feminisms & Environmental Humanities: Toxicity, Sense, Embodiment

Chair: DAVID SCHLOSBERG Chair: JOSH WODAK Chair: CA CRANSTON Chair: JENNIFER HAMILTON

PAOLO MAGAGNOLI, UNIVERSITY OF STEPHEN HEALY, UNIVERSITY OF NSW: VINCENT BICEGO, UNIVERSITY OF • LINDSAY KELLEY, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: The Environmental Humanities and WOLLONGONG: NSW: Anti - Cancer Survival Kit: Toxic ‘'It's the Pride of Australia's Past, and Natural Science—Practice, Policy and reDreaming the Anthropocene: Spatio- embodiment and "posthumanarchy" the Pride of Its Future': the Visual Culture Beyond temporal explorations through of Mining and Australian Nationalism’ Indigenous rock art • SUSANNE PRATT, UNIVERSITY OF DALIA NASSAR, UNIVERSITY OF NSW: Composing and Composting: REBECCA PEARSE, AUSTRALIAN SYDNEY: MICHAEL DAVIS, UNIVERSITY OF Elemental Affections NATIONAL UNIVERSITY & LINDA What can the history of philosophy tell SYDNEY: CONNOR, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: us about 'ecology' and the Making Environmental Knowledge in Land, coal and conflict: Scale-making on environmental crisis? Aboriginal/European Encounters: An the Liverpool Plains Historical Perspective TANIA LEIMBACH, UNIVERSITY OF GARETH BRYANT, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY: Curating NANDITA DAS, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: Ecological dialogue within the university TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY: The limits of renewable energy capital context :over many horizons (O|M|H) Bio-politics of Climate Change Governance in Australia

3.00 – 3.30 AFTERNOON TEA ------

FRIDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2016 (CONT.)

3.30 – 5.00 SESSION ------

HOLME BUILDING—THE HOLME BUILDING— HOLME BUILDING—CULLEN WOOLLEY BUILDING —Level 4 REFECTORY SUTHERLAND ROOM ROOM COMMON ROOM

SESSION 10: PANEL | Kangaloon SESSION 11: The Anthropocene SESSION 12: PANEL | SESSION 13: PANEL | Creative Ecologies on the Screen Anthropocene Futures: Australia & COMPOSTING Feminisms and the Pacific Environmental Humanities II: Water, Weather and Law

Chair: BARBARA HOLLOWAY Chair: DOMINIC REDFERN Chair: JOSH WODAK Chair: GRACE MOORE

• LORRAINE SHANNON: Global SIMON TROON, MONASH • IAIN MCCALMAN, UNIVERSITY • ASTRIDA NEIMANIS, UNIVERSITY Post-wild Gardens and Local UNIVERSITY: OF SYDNEY: Australia in the OF SYDNEY: Chemical Weapons Hyperdisaster Movies: The Role of Anthropocene—A Project in in the Gotland Deep: A Queer Bushland Nature in Recent Hollywood Progress Archive of (Bad) Feelings Blockbusters • JAMES HATLEY, SALISBURY • KIRSTEN WEHNER, UNIVERSITY • SUSAN REID, UNIVERSITY OF UNIVERSITY, SALISBURY, JOSE M ALCARAZ, MURDOCH OF THE ARTS LONDON: Re- SYDNEY: Drifting Borders with MARYLAND, USA: Silos of UNIVERSITY & KEARY SHANDLER, making Australia: Engaging Current Bodies MURDOCH UNIVERSITY DUBAI: publics in building Anthropocene Disaster: Dwelling Oneirically in a Touching the Anthropocene: futures • JENNIFER MAE HAMILTON, Weaponized Landscape Experiential Learning, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: Documentary - Filming and Theatre • JENNY NEWELL, AMERICAN Weathering the City: Shame in/as • LOUISE FOWLER-SMITH, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, Resilience? UNIVERSITY OF NSW: Ecological BELINDA SMAILL, MONASH NEW YORK: “The sea is eating UNIVERSITY: the land” exploring Pacific Imaginaries—local, urban, and Rethinking Documentary: Agency, Islander relationships to a climate- global Digital technology and Ecological changing ocean Interconnectedness

------HOLME BUILDING—THE REFECTORY 5.00 – 5.30 CLOSING SESSION: Research Into Practice— Where Do We Go From Here? • IAIN MCCALMAN, UNIVERSITY OF • DAVID SCHLOSBERG, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY • DOMINIC REDFERN • EMILY O’GORMAN

ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES (in order of days & sessions) ABSTRACTS AND BIOS Environmental Humanities at UNSW, and with considering what prospects exist for more just Thom van Dooren she founded the approaches to resettlement to be pursued in journal Environmental Humanities. She now adaptation planning. serves on several editorial boards, including the newly founded Ecological Citizen. Her most Fiona Miller conducts research from a political recent book is Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and ecology perspective on the social and equity Extinction. (www.deborahbirdrose.com ) dimensions of environmental change in the Asia Pacific, notably Vietnam and Cambodia, as well 11.00 – 12.30 as Australia. She specialises in the study ------of social vulnerability, society-water relations SESSION 1| Narratives of Displacement and and adaptation. Fiona is currently undertaking Destruction research on the role of resettlement in adaptation to climate change. Fiona is a Senior WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2016 Fiona Miller, Macquarie University Lecturer in the Department of Geography and ‘Climate-related displacement as adaptation: Planning, Macquarie University, Sydney. INAUGURAL ASLEC–ANZ JUDITH WRIGHT shadow places and the negotiation of risk’ LECTURE Ian Collinson, Macquarie University ------Considering the history of injustice and ‘Hail Ruin, Hail Destruction: extreme metal in the Deborah Bird Rose, University of NSW impoverishment associated with development- Anthropocene’ ‘Two Laws: Steps Toward Decolonisation in the induced displacement, the spectre of large- Shadow of the Anthropocene’ scale resettlement due to climate change In 2007, Slate magazine journalist Erik Davis presents a formidable humanitarian challenge. wrote, ‘delve far enough into heavy metal and Two large commitments were woven through Planned resettlement is now actively being you’ll find environmentalists’ (Davis 2007). That Judith Wright’s life and work: care for the pursued as a form of adaptation, raising Davis seemed genuinely surprised that the nonhuman world and reconciliation between questions of procedural and distributional justice environment, ecology and heavy metal could be settler-descended and Indigenous people. I at multiple scales. In responding to climate risks connected reveals something about the share these commitments, broadly speaking, through planned resettlement people are likely stereotypes that still frame public perceptions and today I revisit them within the shadow of to confront new risk landscapes associated with of heavy metal music. Almost a decade later, the anthropogenic disasters now engulfing Earth adaptation in unfamiliar places, often under such surprising environmental entanglements are life. Can reconciliation become an ecological new conditions of vulnerability. Resettlement as still a prominent feature of much contemporary project as well as a social project? Can new a state-funded initiative also reflects the heavy metal music. In this paper, I examine ways of becoming-together emerge to entangle imposition of the state’s perception of risk on extreme metal’s engagement with the humans and nonhumans, and with what communities which, in the process, generates anthropocene, a concept that I take here to imperatives? Starting with a recent Aboriginal new and different risks for those resettled, such mean ‘the new contexts and demands – cultural, ceremony-event, I move into western sacred law as debt, food insecurity and social dislocation. ethical, aesthetic, philosophical and political – focussing on this question: What guidance for Drawing on the experience of Vietnam, a of environmental issues that are truly planetary the Anthropocene do the ‘nourishing terrains’ of country considered a hotspot for climate- in scale …’ (Clark, 2015: 2). Drawing on Country and Book offer? related displacement, the paper explores how, Timothy Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ (2007) and due to the failure to genuinely act on climate Basek Agin Donmez’s ‘gothic ecocriticism’ Deborah Bird Rose (FASSA) is a prize-winning change, resettlement is now transforming (2015), I argue here that extreme metal frames author, and a leading figure in the people’s valued places into ‘shadow places’ the anthropocene in a largely misanthropic and Environmental Humanities. She is a Professor in (Plumwood 2008). The paper concludes by anti‐humanist fashion. To ground this analysis, the paper draws on the music of a range of ------Susanna Collinson is a Masters student in the extreme metal bands, including high profile SESSION 2 | Time Journeys – Mapping the Writing Studies department of the University of global acts like Cattle Decapitation (US) and Anthropocene Auckland, and also holds an Honours degree in Gojira (France), as well as representatives of Fine Arts. Her research generally encompasses lesser-known heavy metal subgenres, such as Susanna Collinson and Stephen Turner, a wide range of subjects and objects (often transcendental black‐metal and folk-metal. University of Auckland diagrams), but usually involves some references ‘Unmapping: Pixelated Geographies’ to photography, affect theory, pedagogy and Ian Collinson is a lecturer in media theory and local discourses. cultural studies at Macquarie University. He is The photograph shows something the map currently developing research interests in cannot. The Anthropocene is in a certain sense Stephen Turner is a Senior Lecturer in English, popular music, ecocriticism and the environment about mapping, as it produces a scale – both Drama and Writing Studies at the University of and will begin teaching into the new the balance and the measure of human impact Auckland. His research interests include settler environmental humanities major that begins at on the earth. Our scale, for the most part, colonial, Indigenous and environment studies, Macquarie University in 2017. happens along the spacetime continuum, within pedagogy, literacy and cultural transmission. He our sensory capacities. But what happens when is currently working on a book about post- Deborah Jordan, things get too big or too small for our bodies to settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand, and, with ‘Climate Change Narratives in Australian understand? The age of the Anthropocene Sean Sturm, a book about the place-based Fiction’ represents a new sort of colonialism. Now that university and social futures. His latest we have “completed the geographic map of publication, with Tim Neale, is a co-edited Several major Australian novels about global planet Earth” we find ourselves going in, and special issue of Settler Colonial Studies (Other warming imagine a changed planet notably by going out (Klingan, 2015, p.10). In—to the People’s Country: Law, Water and Entitlement in the authors Alexis Wright, Selenna and George nano, the micro, the pixel, and the cell—and out Settler Colonial Sites). Turner. The current upsurge in the award to the cosmos, the edges of the universe. Just as winning and newly defined genre of cli-fi was writing, photography, film and sound changed Maria Melo Zurita, Macquarie University initially dominated by young adult fiction and our ways of operating in the world; what ways ‘A Journey into the Subterranean Anthropocene’ self-publishers. But there is a very long tradition of recording will come to matter when we of Australians, settler and Indigenous people, cannot see, hear, or touch the materials we are Re-engineered images of Earth from space writing about our habitat and how climate dealing with? How do we navigate a world of have emerged as a powerful metaphorical shapes our communities and our future, and ‘dark writing’? (Carter, 2009) This paper will device in capturing the challenge of the about how colonisation and industrialisation too consider the precarities of scale and Anthropocene (e.g., see the front covers of the often destroys the environment. This paper will representation in the Anthropocene, dealing journals Anthropocene; The Anthropocene contribute to the cognitive mapping, from the particularly with settler colonial histories and Review). This is perhaps unsurprising, as the South, of the key issues and questions ideologies as ways of understanding what NASA photographs of Earth from space have addressing cultural representations in the age happens when we attempt to map the micro long been potent icons of the global of the Anthropocene. and the macro. Carter, Paul. Dark Writing : environmental movement. These images have Geography, Performance, Design. Honolulu, HI, offered a neat framing of the planet’s Deborah Jordan (Senior Research Fellow, Adj., USA: University of Hawaii Press, 2009; Klingan, supposed fragility and limits, emphasising the National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash Katrin, Ashkan Sepahvand, Christoph Rosol, and shared destiny of the human race. This University) is a cultural historian, writer and Bernd M. Scherer, eds. Textures of the planetary framing of environment issues, independent scholar. Her book Climate Change Anthropocene: Grain, Vapor, Ray [Vol. 1]. however, in many ways is problematic as it Narratives in Australian Fiction is available from Manual. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015. reduces the Earth to a superficial image. This is academia.edu not just in a metaphorical sense, as other literature has argued, but also in a literal one. It This paper will examine Gita Mehta’s novel A relations in literature. She has experience in only shows the Earth’s surface, a two River Sutra (1994) to show that bodies of water different NGO-related work, particularly dimensional terrain. The images hide the and of women carry social agency along with involving women and children, and relevant underground, the Earth’s vertical third the cultural symbolic meanings bestowed upon teaching experience in both NUS and Warwick. dimension. It is an underground that is such bodies, both physically and metaphorically. materially hidden under layers of rock, soil and Mehta consciously subverts and re-negotiates Barbara Holloway, Australian National ice; but also, as I argue here, one that has been traditional political and economic University discursively concealed from contemporary understandings of power rooted in structural ‘‘It’s Not Like Forcing a Horse to Face a debates about the Anthropocene. In this patriarchal inequalities that have been Hailstorm’: Examining the Framings of Global presentation, I challenge this ‘surface bias’ by historically reproduced. In her novel, she allows Dilemmas’ showing how the challenges of Anthropocene for an alternative social agency to emerge are very much entangled with the underground’s through the registers of women and water, more Long-standing tensions between the domains in past, present and future. That there is a need to specifically through the bodily registers of which knowledge is made and applied in embrace volume ontologies and explore the women and water. A postcolonial ecofeminist contemporary society, whether rural or urban, depths of the Subterranean Anthropocene. framework will be used to focus on the are a major challenge among the issues of the relationship of women to the materiality of Anthropocene. Nonetheless roles and Maria de Lourdes (Marilu) Melo Zurita works water. responsibilities across these domains are being at the Department of Geography and Planning, renegotiated as expert knowledge engages Macquarie University in Sydney. She has Using this framework both further complicates with populism, politics and above all, local conducted research projects on water and elucidates the relationships that women can knowledge. Arguing that online engagement is governance issues in Mexico, climate change have with water that are in turn intimately central and generates multiple dimensions of governance in the European Union and local linked to other livelihood issues that affect creativity, this paper explores moves from page government responses to disasters (i.e., floods women’s lives, for example, privatization and to web, from literary to online conventions for and bushfires) in Australia. Her current research commercialization of water, discourses of satisfying the reader. interest is on interactions of humans with the (anti/counter) globalization, and issues of underground, from resource extraction (e.g. visibility of women and their everyday In the context of the Grassy Woodlands minerals), to built infrastructure for service existence that is materially connected to water ecosystem of the eastern Riverina, I explore the provision (e.g. tunnels), or for tourism purposes and the environment. This is a relevant topic in progression through Stories of the Riverina (E. O. (e.g. caving), with an overall focus on re- the age of the Anthropocene because of its Schlunke 1965), environmental scientist David considering the role of subterranean-landscapes direct relevance to issues such as environmental Lindenmayer’s Woodlands (2005) and On in historical processes, challenging surface bias. justice and indigenous ecologies and Borrowed Time (2007), the NSW Government knowledges which are sometimes dismissed as Climate Change website and the e-bulletins of being irrelevant in today’s scientific age. NSW Local Land Services. I suggest new ------imperatives generated by both technology and SESSION 3 | Writing Ecology: Mind, Society, Gurpreet Kaur completed her BA (Hons) and environmental issues now blur boundaries Environment MA (Research) degrees in English Literature at between traditional roles of science and art, the National University of Singapore (NUS). She policy and politics as well as between the public Gurpreet Kaur, University of Warwick, United is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of and private spheres. Such new forms of power Kingdom Warwick, . Her research and knowledge production invite examination in ‘The Bodily Registers of Women and Water in interests are in postcolonial fiction, gender terms of aesthetic and critical practices. Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra’ studies, Indian films and television, postcolonial ecofeminism, and gender and environment Barbara Holloway is a Visiting Fellow in the Indigenous knowledge and writing in these achieves a drama of environmental School of Languages, Literature and Linguistics specific, local accounts, and contemplates their transversality par excellence, with the genesis at the Australian National University. She is significance for a global audience. of the landscape and the alignment throughout currently researching the writers and natural of the performing four elements, the extreme history of South-West region of NSW for a Jessica White is the author of A Curious climate alternating between drought and publication on forest, literature and Intimacy and Entitlement. Her short stories, monsoon, the dust and heat, the ocean and the conservation. Her most recent publications essays and poems have appeared widely in mainland. The island / gulf / lagoon / tidal are ‘Rockolalia, Lithomania’ Text vol. 17, 2013, Australian literary journals and she has won zone / river / canyon as well as the fauna and and ‘The Tree and Its Voices’ Australasian numerous awards, funding and residencies. She the flora are all actants, and the human is but Journal of Ecocriticism 2011. She has published is currently an ARC DECRA Postdoctoral one of the agents. The "big story" serves an in creative nonfiction in journals and collections Research Fellow at the University of environmental exemplar globally as well as and is currently an assistant editor of the Queensland, where she is writing an sheds light on the complexity of Northern Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism. ecobiography of nineteenth-century botanist Territory. The trans-indigenous impact is Georgiana Molloy. She can be found at especially significant because the indigenous Jessica White, University of Queensland www.jessicawhite.com.au people worldwide share common predicaments ‘Ecobiography: Decentring the Human in Life and at the same time possess similar legacies. Writing’ ------SESSION 4 | Indigenous Writing and Rose Hsiu-li Juan is Professor in the The term ‘autobiography’ emerged in the West Environmental Imaginaries Department of Foreign Languages and in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth Literatures, National Chung Hsing University, century. Analyses of the form have historically Rose Hsiu-li Juan, National Chung Hsing Taichung, Taiwan, and a board member of The attended to the concept of a unified selfhood, University, Taichung, Taiwan Association for the Study of Literature and which is seen as representative of universal ‘Environmental Imaginary and Indigenous Environment in ROC (ASLE-Taiwan). Her human nature. This interpretation of Knowledge in Alexis Wright's Carpentaria: An research interests include global indigenous autobiography is one that is emphatically Animist Ontological Perspective’ study of literature and culture, Native North anthropocentric, with the human at its core. Yet American literature, ecocriticism, and narrative we cannot have a life without the lives of others In light of global indigenous study this paper theory. (such as plants, for example), and thus it proposes to read the ecological/geological becomes desirable, in creating an deep time presented in indigenous literature Jim Fairhall, DePaul University, Chicago autobiography, to include the lives that sustain and its significance on biota and habitat, human ‘Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremonies and Stories as its subject: the autos of a biography must as well, from the perspective of new animist Agents of Indigenous Ecological Identity’ automatically include its environment. Such an ontology. account accords equal weight to its human and Leslie Marmon Silko’s fiction and nonfiction non-human subjects and is known as an Based on Philippe Descola's animist/totemic describe the Laguna Pueblo people’s sense of ‘ecobiography’. ontological identification, this paper explores being mutually defined by nature in a desert an indigenous worlding drastically different ecosystem. In her essay, “Landscape, History, This paper explores and expounds on the from that of a naturalist scheme, and applies and the Pueblo Imagination” (1986), she concept of ecobiography using Australian the revisionist insight to reading the illustrates the normality of decaying bodies that examples such as Margaret Somerville’s environmental imaginary and indigenous exist in a natural-human geography made up Body/Landscape Journals and Dick knowledge in Alexis Wright's Carpentaria. of landscape and stories. In her fiction, Roughsey/Goobalathaldin’s Moon and Incorporating the Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent especially Ceremony (1977)—the first novel by Rainbow. It underscores the importance of Dreaming into its narrative backbone, the novel a Native American woman—Silko demonstrates the necessity of cultural narratives, including decade traditions of art about landscape have point to explore specific Indigenous cultural, those in ceremonies and legends, for an been revitalised, and recently in Melbourne historical and textual engagements with the actionable understanding of the web of many galleries demonstrated this with a huge ocean. Tracing ecocritical engagements (and human/natural relationships in a time of showing of art about the environment under the disengagements) with Indigenous scholarship, it ecocatastrophe. In fact, in her writing, banner of the Climarte movement. will ask what kind of critical work is possible “humanity” and “nature” are neither subject- when we think about Indigenous knowledges not object nor even separate categories. Individuals In this talk, John Wolseley will discuss how only about but as the sea. belong to natural communities and ecosystems contemporary artists occupy both ends of a as much as they belong to cultural communities. spectrum - the ones he calls the 'sledge hammers Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Tayo, a World War II veteran and the ' who are strongly didactic, and the 'poetic Taranaki) writes and teaches at the intersections protagonist of this novel’s quest-and-survival visionaries' who hope that by enabling us to of Indigenous, Pacific, literary and cultural story, embodies the importance of Laguna truly see the power and beauty of the earth we studies. She has taught at Victoria University of Pueblo legends and ceremonies as he tries to might be inspired to do something to save it. As Wellington, University of Hawai’i-Mānoa, and make sense of the introduction of atomic an artist who for 60 years has been tugged in Macquarie University. Her first book was Once weapons into the world and the colonization of both directions Wolseley will try and make the Were Pacific: Maori Connections to Native Americans. In my talk I will focus in case for working somewhere in the middle; and (Minnesota 2012). She also writes the particular on these ceremonies and legends as argue that art about the environment is best occasional poem. local actions with import for global ecologies. when it is good as art as well as a powerful tool and spur for environmental change. 3.30 – 4.15 Jim Fairhall teaches modern literature and ------environmental studies at DePaul University in John Wolseley was born 1938 in England and KEYNOTE | Joni Adamson, Arizona State Chicago. His scholarly writing revolves around settled in Australia in 1976. His work over the University James Joyce and ecocriticism. He has also last twenty years has been a search to discover ‘Backbone, Country, Anthropocene: Integrating written award-winning poems, fiction and how we dwell and move within landscape – a Knowledges, Forging New Constellations of creative nonfiction. meditation on how the earth is a dynamic Humanities and Social Science Practice’ system of which we are all a part. 1.30 – 3.30 Humanities for the Environment, or HfE, is an ------In 2005 he was awarded an honorary degree ambitious project, seed funded by the Andrew KEYNOTE | John Wolseley, Artist of Doctor of Science by Macquarie University, W. Mellon Foundation (2013-2015), that has ‘Art about the environment: what's the point?’ Sydney and the Emeritus Medal from the Visual networking universities and researchers Arts Board of Australia Council. internationally through a system of Artists and writers reveal and communicate the “Observatories.” The project began by piloting nature and power of the living world. John KEYNOTE | Alice Te Punga Sommerville, an approach that conveners termed, the Wolseley will discuss how from Turner through Macquarie University “Anthropocene humanities.” Over time, however, Cezanne to Fiona Hall, there is a long tradition ‘Somewhere the sea.’ HfE researchers, artists, and community partners of artists who, in the process of doing this also began calling for a widening conversation warn about the ways in which humankind is “Somewhere – barely discernible since evening about human-nonhuman relationship in an era of changing the environment. Now that we are in had been long forgotten and the night had epochal change, one that would draw more the process of irrevocably damaging the earth's been shrugged aside – somewhere the sea was ancient, indigenous or Aboriginal, concepts such vital systems many visual artists are making casting its breath at the land.” This talk takes as Backbone from North America and Country work which even more directly addresses our this moment from Maori writer Patricia Grace’s from Australia, into all conversations about aberrant anthropocene tendencies. In the last iconic 1975 short story, “Parade,” as a starting where we have come from, where we are, and Environment (ASLE) and is Convener of the North where we are going in the future. American Observatory in the Humanities for the Environment Global Network. She is co-editor In this lecture, I will range from the global to the of Keywords for Environmental Studies (New local, across geographies, ecosystems, climates York University Press, 2016) and Ecocriticism and weather regimes, moving from icy, melting and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth Arctic landscapes to the bleaching Australian to Cosmos (Routledge, 2016). She is author of , and from an urban over 50 articles, book chapters and reviews. pedagogical “laboratory” in Phoenix, Arizona to Vatican City in Rome. I will explore how Humanities for the Environment projects are end showcasing the ways that humanists and social scientists are working to “integrate knowledges” from diverse cultures and ontologies and pilot new “constellations of practice” that are moving beyond traditional contemplative or reflective scholarly outcomes (the book, the essay). These innovative projects are affirming what Mike Hulme (2009) has observed: that framing complex environmental changes as “mega- problems” necessarily demands “mega- solutions,” and this perception “has led us down the wrong road”. HfE projects are illustrating how humanists and social scientists can work with local community-based alliances, not to find one solution but a range of evidence-based, reasoned, scaled, and culturally diverse responses “reflective of life in a plural world” (Castree et al. 2014). I will examine how and why HfE projects are taking concepts of Backbone and Country seriously and lovingly, as they pilot new constellations of practice in the environmental humanities and social sciences.

Joni Adamson is Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English and Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. She was 2012 President of the Association for the Study of Literature and ABSTRACTS AND BIOS KEYNOTE | Petra Tschakert, University of 11.00 – 12.30 Western Australia ------‘The “resilient citizen”: increasing inequalities SESSION 1 PANEL | Aotearoa New Zealand – and intangible loss’ Indigenous knowledges, mātauranga Māori, sciences and cross-cultural conversations Resilience is the new standard of success. It is seen as a core ability that humans in the Attending to the crucial influence of Anthropocene ought to possess to overcome mātauranga Māori (Māori indigenous obstacles and embrace global and local knowledge and wisdom) in recent environmental changes. I explore how the hyped resilience restoration projects, Treaty of Waitangi discourse constructs particular subjects as settlements and Māori participation in science, ‘resilient citizens’, demanding that they carry the this panel offers insights into the ways Māori weight of disasters without being able to ecological knowledge informs new ways of reduce the inequalities that shape the THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2016 engaging with local ecological issues. We are vulnerabilities and precarious situations in which keen to open the panel to wider discussion on many people have to live today. KEYNOTE| Elizabeth De Loughrey, UCLA outreach communication with indigenous

‘Submarine Futures of the Anthropocene’ communities. Petra Tschakert is Centenary Professor in Rural

This paper outlines the development of the Development at the University of Western Australia. She received her MPhil in 1991 in Huhana Smith (Ngāti Tukorehe) Massey “oceanic turn” and the rise of “critical ocean University, Wellington, New Zealand. studies” as vital to figuring the Anthropocene. It Geography & Economics and French from the Karl Franzens Universität in Graz, Austria, and ‘The practice of cross-cultural restoration and builds upon the work of Elizabeth Povinelli’s concentrated dialogue and engagement theory of “geontologies” and by turning to the her PhD in Arid Lands Resource Sciences with a minor in Applied Anthropology from the between Western sciences and customary submarine sculptures of Jason deCaires Taylor ecological and cultural knowledge embodied in argues for a provocative Caribbean aesthetic University of Arizona in 2003. Her research activities and practice focus broadly on human- mātauranga Māori’ of “sea ontologies.” By examining the multispecies collaborations of coral and reef environment interactions and more specifically on rural livelihoods, environmental change, This paper will focus on the practice of cross- ecologies it suggests a new oceanic imaginary cultural restoration and concentrated dialogue for the more-than-human Anthropocene. marginalisation, social learning, and deliberate societal transformation. Her main interest lies in and engagement between Western sciences and customary ecological and cultural Elizabeth DeLoughrey is a Professor in English the theoretical and empirical intersections of political ecology, environmental justice, complex knowledge embodied in mātauranga Māori, as and at the Institute for the Environment and worked out in the award-winning, six-year Sustainability at the University of California, systems science, and participatory research, with research experience mainly in Ghana, Manaaki Taha Moana (MTM) project. Building Los Angeles. She is co-editor of Caribbean relationships through cross-cultural research, the Literature and the Environment (2005), Senegal, Tanzania, South Africa, Nepal, and India. MTM research programme (2009-2015) Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the actively restored and enhanced coastal Environment (2011), and Global Ecologies and ecosystems and their services of importance to the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial iwi [tribes], through a better knowledge of these Approaches (2015). She is the author of Routes ecosystems and the degradation processes that and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific have affected them. Sharing principles, Island Literatures (2007) and Allegories of the innovations and lessons from one of the nation’s Anthropocene (forthcoming). largest and most acclaimed collaborations between Māori and scientists, this paper will give effect to tikanga Māori (values and This paper explores the ethics and efficacy of share the fruits of collaborative conversations practices) related to decision-making for our such proposals through analyzing artificial coral and a range of images from Huhana’s own art natural environment. reefs as an attempt to conserve marine practice. ecosystems threatened by ocean warming and Ocean Mercier (Ngāti Porou) is a senior ocean acidification. The work of scientists, Huhana Smith (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti lecturer at Te Kawa ā Māui (Māori Studies), engineers, artists and designers in making Raukawa ki Te Tonga) is an artist and Victoria University of Wellington. A physicist by artificial coral reefs is used to frame the academic with wide-ranging experience in training, her key focus is at the contestations around the notion of designing Māori art and museum practice, exhibition nterface between Māori and Western science. away the deleterious effects of Anthropocene. planning and implementation, indigenous Ocean is also the presenter of Māori Josh Wodak is a researcher, artist and design knowledge and science research. She is Head Television’s Project Mātauranga. In 2012 she of Art at Massey University, Wellington. Huhana won a National Tertiary Teaching Excellence educator, and Associate Lecturer, UNSW Art was former Senior Curator Māori at the award for her work in exploring digital and Design in the Faculty of Art and Design, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa pedagogies with indigenous students. University of NSW. His work critically engages 2003-2009. She is leading an active with cultural and ethical entanglements between participatory, collaborative and kaupapa ------environmental engineering and conservation Māori research project - Adaptations to Climate SESSION 2 | Beyond Simply Fishing: biology as means to mitigate species extinction and biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene. He Change for Māori Coastal Communities (2015- Conservation, Construction and Communities 2017). http://www.huhanasmith.com holds a BA (Honours) in Anthropology (Sydney Josh Wodak, University of NSW University, 2002), a PhD in Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Research (Australian National Ocean Mercier. Te Kawa a M ui, Victoria ‘The Life (and Death) Aquatic: Conservation ā University, 2011) and has exhibited his media University of Wellington, New Zealand Biology and Environmental Engineering in Artificial Coral Reefs’ art, sculpture and interactive installations in art ‘(Ngāti Porou): A Conversation about Māori galleries, museums and festivals across Australia Ecology, Biotechnology and Wasps’ In response to the profound biophysical changes and internationally.

The National Science Challenge project on unfolding under the advent of the Anthropocene there has been a shift in Li Chen, Edith Cowan University Biotechnological Controls of Pest Wasps began ‘On Material Engagement with Nature: in 2016. It supports research into four novel conservation strategies for mitigating environmental challenges. This shift has been Rethinking the Construction of Diasporic Space methods of controlling wasps in Aotearoa New Through the Case of Western Australia's Zealand, for instance, using a recently from conservation biology, as non-interventionist research, monitoring, and cataloguing of Abalone’ discovered ‘trojan’ mite to control wasp nest size. In a companion project, Social and Cultural biophysical environments, to environmental engineering, as intentional intervention to With the acceleration of globalization, studies Perceptions of Biotechnological Controls of Pest in diaspora have increasingly absorbed Wasps, my team will canvass and explore remediate human impacts on biophysical environments. The converging aspirations geographic ideas and the views on the peoples’ attitudes towards these controls, with a relationships between non-human species and particular focus on the views of Māori between conservation biology and environmental engineering are considered in humankind. However, there are few in-depth stakeholders. Māori have long voiced their studies addressing the construction of diasporic concerns about biotechnologies and I will terms of how proposals to mitigate these impacts draw on notions of design: from the space in relation to the materiality of the summarise the key arguments. Then I will discuss natural world. Considering the relative absence our work in progress, and our approach to the scale of life, through synthetic biology, to the scale of climates, through geo-engineering. of the material environment as a serious subject research. I will explore, for instance, whether in contemporary diaspora studies, the starting the ‘social licence to operate’ framework can point of this article attempts to explore the imagination, it resonates with the contemporary transformation in environmental conflicts— connections between Chinese diaspora and the ocean crisis. In this paper I consider those explores sustainability discourses through the ecologic environment in Western Australia, as ‘beings in flux’ as the human/more-than-human case study of tuna. She draws on ethnographic presented in the case of abalone harvesting. entities that are part of and rely upon marine fieldwork in a traditional fishery in Italy and This study provides a vivid case of an insightful ecosystems. I take a wholistic approach to interviews with diverse groups, to think through view on the relationship between local Chinese ecosystems as comprised of what Elspeth themes of preservation, change, visibility, care, diaspora and their abalone recreational Probyn has called ‘fish-human communities’ and conflict in the project of sustaining tuna. harvesting in Perth. The study of abalone (2013:158). I ask what is sustained and what is relates the transformation of traditional Chinese not in the work that goes into sustaining tuna? ------cultures to WA’s ecologic environment. The What worlds have come into being in relation SESSION 3 PANEL | Art, Ecology and significance of abalone, which is a common little to the global demand for Northern Bluefin tuna, Governance – Intercreate mollusc in biological category, has attracted overfishing, stock decline, and the contemporary numerous attentions in Chinese culinary cultures. regulatory responses? And what worlds are This panel is hosted by Intercreate. However, abalone harvesting demonstrates how disappearing? Presentations will discuss specific arts practices, the Chinese people change their conceptions of These are ontological questions that I address projects and organisations in the Oceania nature and the self-perceptions of themselves by considering the transformation of fish-human Region that are partnering across disciplines, through the communications with the new natural communities in southern Italy within the global cultural, geographic and political borders. surroundings. Leading from sensory frenzy to fish, eat, save, and know tuna. Such These partnerships are sharing old methods and ethnography and food studies, the study global conditions have resulted in new ways of creating new ways, to build community capacity analyses the cultural values of nature in the life that privilege those with social and and strengthen/nurture ecosystems (psychic, contemporary constitutions of diasporic spaces. economic capital, while other ways of life social, cultural, and environmental). In some It argues for a more explicit understanding of become precarious. I argue that regulations cases, these methods are being used to disrupt the importance of the material and embodied based on single-species neglect ecosystem existing dominant systems of the environment in diasporic research. relationships that harbour a wealth of Industrial/Colonial/Modern/Capitalist eras, as ecological knowledge, ethics, and socio- a way of creating openings for new Li Chen is a PhD Candidate in the School of technical practices. Ironically it is these approaches in collective and collaborative Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University precarious life worlds that may offer insights for living. in Perth, Western Australia. She was a the future of fish-human communities. humanistic documentary filmmaker in a Chinese Connery, C. L. (1996). The oceanic feeling and Chair: Nigel Helyer is an independent sculptor TV station. Now she focuses on the studies of the regional imaginary. In R. Wilson & W. and sound-artist who has forged an relationships between Australian ecologic Dissanayake (Eds.), Global/local: Cultural international reputation for large scale sound- environment and the local diasporic Chinese. production and the transnational imaginary. sculpture installations, environmental public Durham, NC: Duke University Press. artworks and interactive new-media projects for Probyn, E. (2014). Sustaining Fish-Human museums and festivals. He augments these studio Kate Johnston, University of Sydney Communities? A More-Than-Human Question. In activities with critical writing, curating and the ‘Beings in Flux: sustaining local and global ‘fish- Ethnographic Worldviews (pp. 155-171). production of radiophonic works. Nigel’s modus human communities’’ Springer Netherlands. operandi is strongly interdisciplinary, linking a broad platform of creative practice with ‘A being dedicated to water is a being in flux’ Kate Johnston is a PhD candidate at the scientific research and development in (Bachelard in Connery 1996: 290). While University of Sydney in the Department of academic, environmental and community Gaston Bachelard’s 1942 meditation on water Gender and Cultural Studies. Her thesis— contexts, and which is manifest in a complex and the human psyche is infused with Sustaining More Than Fish: tradition and meeting of Poetics and Technics that forms a practical implementation of Earth centred law, Sandy Sur is a community leader and nexus between art, community and ecology. governance and ethics in Australia researcher from the remote tropical Island of (www.earthlaws.org.au). Michelle’s email is: Merelava in Vanuatu. His research focuses Michelle Maloney & Ilka Blue Nelson [email protected] around the Water Music of Vanuatu and its ‘New governance models for bio-regional connection to the environment. Sandy believes health: GreenPrints and the role of law and art’ Ilka Blue Nelson is a Creative Ecologist with a water connects everything on earth and is transdisciplinary practice informed by essential for survival. He is the Manager of the As we move into the Anthropocene and struggle mythology, systems thinking and the sacred. Her Leweton Cultural group who deliver a range of to deal with a climate changing world, a critical studio, Latorica (www.latorica.net) works to customary artisanal performances and question must be answered: how can we create reenchant people to the complexity of our workshops including music, dance, weaving, human governance systems that enable us to greater ecology, currently through workshops, carving, mixed-media/found objects, live within our ecological limits and nurture and film and ceremony. Ilka collaborates on a wide environmental art, and instrument-making. restore the Earth community? range of cross-cultural, arts based and Earth centered projects. Ilka’s email is: Tom Dick is an executive producer and This paper provides an overview of AELA’s [email protected] production manager, who possesses extensive ‘GreenPrints’ program, which is working to international experience in a diverse range of create new models for Earth centred law and Sandy Sur, Thomas Dick & Leah Barclay projects and events; with a demonstrated track governance, using bio-regional health as a ‘Vanuatu Water Music, technology, and record of success in producing large scale, starting point. GreenPrints brings together cultural/decolonising politics’ professional events in remote locations. Tom is a experts from law, planning, the natural sciences, key member of the Wantok Musik Foundation engineering, renewable energy, indigenous Sandy Sur’s research focuses around the Water team and has more than a decade’s experience knowledge and the arts, to re-design Australia’s Music of Vanuatu and its connection to the in Melanesia promoting and facilitating various environmental governance systems. In this environment. Water connects everything on cultural exchanges and a greater level of paper we draw out the fundamental role that earth and is essential for survival. At a time economic empowerment for Melanesian and the arts play in articulating the possibilities, when the world is facing so many environmental indigenous artists and their communities. challenges and fears we must face if we are to challenges it is more important than ever before transform our relationship with the natural to deeply understand the role of water in our Leah Barclay is an Australian sound artist, world. It will also highlight the role for all life. Understanding the sound and rhythm of composer and researcher working at the creatives in reimagining, redesigning and Vanuatu Water Music allows us to explore the intersection of art, science and technology. She communicating new ways of managing human environment in new ways and develop a specialises in electroacoustic music, acoustic impacts on the Earth, in a climate changed deeper understanding of the role sound plays in ecology and emerging fields of biology world. the environment. The Water Music of Vanuatu is exploring environmental patterns and changes site-specific and deeply inspired by the through sound. Her work has been Michelle Maloney (BA/LLB (Hons) ANU, PhD surrounding environment. This inspiring tradition commissioned, performed and exhibited to wide Griffith Law School) is a lawyer and Earth is now evolving in response to rapidly changing acclaim internationally by organisations advocate. She is the Co-Founder and National climates that are affecting island communities. including UNESCO and Ear to the Earth. She is Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, Sandy is involved in a range of interdisciplinary currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Chairperson of the Environmental Defenders projects with the co-presenters exploring water Griffith University where she is leading a Office Queensland and Australian music, audio-visual technology, and portfolio of research in acoustic ecology and representative on the Executive Committee of cultural/decolonising politics. climate change. the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. AELA’s mission is to build the understanding and Tracey Benson that follow. At Intercreate we believe an change and global ecosystem decline, we must ‘TransArts Alliance’ important part of resolving the problems around reduce our consumption of the natural world the human relationship with the environment, is to and live within our ecological limits. But how do There are a number of small organisations involve indigenous groups in all discussions of the we do this? Modern industrial societies have across Oceania with shared values. These environment. Consequently we are working with little experience understanding, or trying to live organisations are based in Australia, Vanuatu partners to ensure this is a component of our within, the ecological limits of our ecosystems. and New Zealand and have a role that is multi- major projects. Our projects and residencies have Our dominant economic, legal and political focal, exploring the interconnected themes of a strong focus on environment, regionally, systems are built on a pro-growth belief system technology, arts, science and Indigenous nationally and internationally. and proposals to regulate to reduce knowledge. These are organisations that are http://www.intercreate.org/ consumption are often met with objections that it already ‘networked’ with each other, with key interferes with individual rights and freedoms. people working across a number of the ------This paper offers a practical framework for organisations. Each organisation has its specific SESSION 4 Postgrad/ECR Workshop | regulating to reduce consumption, based on strengths, usually related to its location and its Pathways in the Environmental Humanities real-world examples of regulatory success. The existing partnerships. Many of these strengths Convenors: paper first problematizes consumption within the could be scaled and leveraged for the benefit Alanna Myers, University of Melbourne concepts of ‘the Anthropocene’ and Planetary of all parties. By working in partnership with Emma Davies, Australian National University Boundaries. It then addresses three case key organisations and individuals TransArts studies—recreational fishing in Queensland, the Alliance will develop collaborative projects and PANELLISTS: plastic bag ban in South Austr alia and events on interconnected themes. • IAIN MCCALMAN, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY residential water restrictions in Queensland • THOM VAN DOOREN, UNIVERSITY OF NSW during the Millennium Drought in Queensland. It Tracey Benson is an artist and researcher • JONI ADAMSON, ARIZONA STATE argues that these regulatory examples are based in Australia. Her creative work UNIVERSITY cause for great optimism, because rather than experiments with a range of media—video, hampering individual rights, these examples online, open data, mobile technologies and 1.30 – 3.00 show that with strong leadership, commitment to augmented reality. She often collaborates with ------understanding the scientific issues and ensuring cultural owners and guides—working with SESSION 5 | People—Law, Environment—War communities are engaged in implementing Indigenous communities, historians, artists, solutions, people are willing to work collectively technologists and thinkers. Her work has Michelle Maloney, Australian Earth Laws to reduce the consumption of material resources. 1 featured in many international and national Alliance Global Footprint Network, 'Annual Report' emerging media festivals since 1996. Tracey ‘Next generation environmental law or echoes (2011) has a MA from QUT, Creative Industries and a of 1984? Regulating consumption and living http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php PhD from ANU. www.traceybenson.com within our ecological limits’ /GFN/page/annual_report_2011/

Intercreate.org is a project-based organisation One of the greatest causes of the destruction of Michelle Maloney (BA/LLB (Hons) ANU, PhD based in New Zealand/ Aotearoa, consisting of the natural world is the unsustainable Griffith Law School) is a lawyer and Earth an international network of people interested in consumption of ‘natural resources’ by human advocate. She is the Co-Founder and National art, science, culture and technology. Our motto is societies. It is estimated that today, we use the Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance developing the culture to create a sustainable equivalent of 1.6 planets to provide the (www.earthlaws.org.au), Chairperson of the civilization. We live in a world where the human resources we use and absorb our waste.1 And Environmental Defenders Office Queensland connection to the environment is having a strong of course, we only have one precious Earth. If and Australian representative on the Executive negative impact, particularly for the generations we are to address the challenges of climate Committee of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. For information about Michelle’s Just as they escaped Vietnam as refugees on a ontology developed by anthropologist Tim publications and AELA projects, please visit: boat across waters, Agent Orange also has Ingold, who reminds us that human history is ‘the http://www.earthlaws.org.au/about-us/aela- somehow travelled and lived within waters in process wherein both people and their team/michellemaloney/ the river systems of both countries. environments are continually bringing each other into being’ (2000, 87). As I will argue, Boi Huyen Ngo, University of Technology, Boi Huyen Ngo is currently a PhD student at the these projects revivify food sources within Sydney University of Technology, Sydney. She writes, urbanised landscapes by making them newly ‘In the Rivers: The haunting of Agent Orange for connecting multiple ideas of home and its legible, through sensuous participation and the Vietnamese Australians’ environments, family histories and migration, lenses of Indigenous, peasant and subsistence particularly Vietnamese Australian migration. knowledge. In the context of climate change and the She is currently doing a project on water within inevitable future of climate change refugees, Vietnamese Australian memories and sensory Laura Fisher (post-doctoral fellow at Sydney there is the need to explore the intrinsically experiences of loss and homelessness. College of the Arts, University of Sydney) is an affective connection between migrants and their arts researcher and sociologist. Her recently connection to the environment, particularly ------published book is Aboriginal Art in Australian changing environments and homelands. This SESSION 6 | Experiments with Bodies, Plants & society: Hope and Disenchantment (Anthem paper will use the case study of Agent Orange Building Materials Press). Laura is currently investigating the within the waters of Vietnam and Australia to contribution artists are making in rural understand the haunting and the affects of Laura Fisher, University of Sydney communities facing challenges such water contamination within lived experiences of ‘The poetics of foraging: an account of Diego depopulation, urgent environmental issues and (un)belonging. Agent Orange was used by the Bonito and Artist as Family’ conflicts over land use. This study includes case U.S military in Vietnam as part of the herbicidal studies in Australia, Japan, Sweden and Russia. warfare program called Operation Ranch The twin trajectories of urbanisation and Hand. The Union Carbide chemical plant, which globalisation have led to more and more of us Rebecca Giggs, Macquarie University; Jennifer had produced Agent Orange for the Vietnam being estranged from the sources of our food, Mae Hamilton, University of Sydney/NYU War, was situated in Sydney, Australia by the while the industrialisation of agriculture has Sydney; Astrida Neimanis, University of Parramatta River. The chemical waste was evicted long-established practices of land Sydney; Kate Wright, University of New dumped into this river and the river is stewardship from rural areas. And yet food is England; Tessa Zettel, Independent Artist contaminated. Parramatta River is a river an inexhaustible site of hope for ‘The Weathering Report: Notes from the Field’ situated in Western Sydney where many environmentalist projects: it holds the promise Vietnamese migrants, including my family, lives. that we can recalibrate our reliance upon The Weathering Report reflects on a series of It is a popular landmark for picnics and events natural systems and that new kinds of earth- collaborative events, meetings and for Vietnamese families. The emotional affect literate subjectivities can be formed. This paper conversations that comprise our collective’s upon my family, once they realised the will discuss two socially engaged art projects ongoing project on the art of weathering. We presence of Agent Orange within the waters of which exemplify this liberationist sensibility propose the concept and practice of their new homeland, has brought strong visceral around food, and which revolve specifically “weathering” as a means for embodying and sensory memories of their experiences of around foraging: Diego Bonetto’s ‘Wild Food’ climate change, or as a way to radically the war and of migration. Their migration Tours in Sydney and Artist as Family’s journey localise the global phenomenon of climate experience has a circular akin to the nature of year-long performance of living on the land change. In both the dominant environmental water contamination; Agent Orange has been while travelling by bicycle between rural imaginary and empirical scientific study, climate produced in Australia, released in Vietnam and Victoria and Cape York. My analysis will be change is too often posited as distant and contaminated/s both Australia and Vietnam. guided by the ecological theorisation of human abstracted from our everyday experiences of weather (see e.g. Neimanis and Walker 2014; forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic. ------Yusoff and Gabrys 2011). Either neoliberal SESSION 7 | Digital Worlds, Digital Futures progress narratives of controlling the future or Astrida Neimanis is a Lecturer in the sustainability narratives of saving the past Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at Jessica McLean, Macquarie University buttress such abstraction. Both largely obfuscate the University of Sydney. She writes about ‘Digital spaces and justice in the Anthropocene’ the ways that our bodies weather the world water, weather, bodies and other environmental and are part of the changing climate. We matters. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Our use of digital media has ecological propose weathering as a “poethical” (Retallack Phenomenology is forthcoming in early 2017. implications both in terms of our physical 2004) interruption to these abstractions. Our She is also Associate Editor of the journal reliance on infrastructure and tools to connect to more specific proposition for this presentation is Environmental Humanities. digital spaces and what we do within digital that bringing together weather and climate spaces. However, the contribution of digital change in and as the body calls for a new Kate Wright is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow spaces to the Anthropocene is not yet well understanding of measurement and new at the University of New England. Her current explored and digital activism in particular may methods for measuring that exceeds the project is an experiment in multispecies and play a role in working towards more just aggregation of data that we take as a sign of cross-cultural collaborative research methods futures. In bringing together geographies of global warming. The paper will illustrate this through the development of a community digital change and the Anthropocene, this argument with some examples of alternative garden focused on Aboriginal Australian culture paper focuses on interventions originating in methods for measuring and new kinds of and knowledges in Armidale. Her first digital spaces and networking through, around instruments that we have developed in our monograph is Transdisciplinary Journeys in the and beyond these. This paper will consider collaborative and experimental research. Anthropocene: More-than-human Encounters issues of justice and the Anthropocene within the (Forthcoming 2017: Routledge Environmental context of change originating from digital Rebecca Giggs writes about ecology and Humanities Series). She is co-editor of the ‘Living spaces. By exploring a case study of online environmental imagination, animals, landscape, Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities’, in digital action as manifest in the Climate politics and memory. Her essays and columns Environmental Humanities. Council’s creation and continuation, important have appeared in Granta, New York Times aspects of what is made possible from digital Magazine, Best Australian Science Writing, Best Tessa Zettel is an artist and writer who works in spaces will be highlighted. Further, this paper Australian Essays, Aeon, Overland and Meanjin. various collaborative modes to imagine or enact will begin to look at the costs of digital action – Her first nonfiction book is forthcoming from other ways of living. Her projects involve both material and discursive – to ascertain the Scribe. Rebecca teaches in the English opening up spaces of dialogue, forms of extent of productive change that can stem from Department at Macquarie University exchange, mapping, and revaluing online spaces in the overlooked cultural practices and knowledge. Anthropocene. Jennifer Mae Hamilton is a researcher, teacher She teaches interdisciplinary design at UTS and and gardener with a PhD in English Literature writes for unMagazine and Runway. Recent Jess McLean is currently a geography lecturer from UNSW. She is a Postdoctoral Research publications include ‘Making Time: Food at Macquarie University. She conducts research Associate in the Department of Gender and Preservation and Ontological Design’ with Abby in two main areas: geographies of digital Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney Mellick Lopes for Food Democracy: Critical change, examining the environmental costs and funded by The Seed Box: A MISTRA+FORMAS Lessons in Food, Communication/Design, Art and benefits of digital spaces, and; water cultures in Environmental Humanities Collaboratory. She Theoretical Practice (Chicago: Intellect Books, urban and rural spaces, working with Indigenous also lectures in ecocriticism at NYU Sydney. Her 2016). and non-Indigenous peoples to identify first book, This Contentious Storm: An Ecocritical marginalisation of particular knowledges in and Performance History of King Lear, is water planning and management processes, and developing ways to change those injustices. Benjamin Abraham is currently a scholarly that the recent and rapid European settlement Benjamin Abraham, University of Technology teaching fellow in the School of Communication of southern-world places can be understood as Sydney at the University of Technology Sydney. His an accelerated form of ‘slow violence’ (Nixon ‘The Videogame Terraforming Imaginary’ research and teaching has a highly 2011). In examining the workings of what it interdisciplinary focus across games and digital terms ‘extinction pedagogy’, the paper is The past several years have witnessed the culture, internet activism, nonhuman philosophy, especially interested in the figure of the ark— emergence of a new genre of videogame with finance studies, and climate change. He is as a Judeo-Christian trope which has long implicit, and sometimes explicit, ecological currently working on a book length manuscript haunted the South Pacific; as a technology of themes. Labelled variously as the examining the intersections between digital transfer and acclimatisation; as a living archive; ‘survival/crafting’ genre and taking its cues gaming and climate change. as a ‘death worlding’ device (Rose 2011, p. from the landmark title Minecraft, games of this 12); and as a mechanism for crystallising new kind are often preoccupied with altering the ------human-animal relationships, which in turn landscape itself and with the ability of players SESSION 8 | Close Encounters: Multispecies crystallise ideas about how a wider world of to mine and collecting resources to both sustain Studies Above and Below the Earth life is composed and how it ought to be cared themselves and further advance their material for and managed. position and access to technology. As I have Anna Boswell, University of Auckland Graham, George. ‘Rangi-hua-moa: A Legend of argued elsewhere (Abraham, forthcoming) ‘Dark Arks and Extinction Pedagogy’ the Moa in Waitemata District, Auckland’, despite the seemingly embedded ‘ecological’ Journal of the Polynesian Society 28: 110 themes of these games which often feature a In an article published in the Journal of the (1919): 107-110. Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence greater than normal emphasis on terrain Polynesian Society in 1919, George Graham and the Environmentalism of the Poor. interactions, food and shelter, their mechanics records the first encounter between the people Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: Harvard more often feature simplified ladders of of Waitemata and the emu specimens shipped University Press, 2011. Rose, Deborah Bird. technological progress and fail to generate a to Kawau Island in the 1870s to stock Governor Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. sense of what Timothy Morton (2010) calls George Grey’s private menagerie. “[W]e Charlottesville and London: University of ‘ecology without nature’. called it the Moa”, says Mereri, Graham’s Virginia Press, 2011. In this paper I propose to examine in more informant, “and my cousin, Te Hemara, made a detail the emergence of the videogame speech to those birds and cried, and we all Anna Boswell is a lecturer in Writing Studies at terraforming imaginary, and offer an account there cried, for we remembered those old the University of Auckland. She talks and writes of the origins of the impulse to terraform in the proverbs and laments concerning the past, which about settler colonialism in terms of inscription, modern videogame as an extension of long likened the disappearance of our dead parents pedagogy and ecology, and has standing fantasies of dominance and power and ancestors to the extinction of that bird, the recently been awarded a Marsden Fund grant within the larger gaming imaginary. I draw on Moa” (1919, p. 108). This paper unravels the (2016-19) by the Royal Society of New the work of Val Plumwood (2003) to describe mnemonic complexities of this story in order to Zealand for a project investigating the history narratives of mastery over nature and find the trace local responses to settler colonial lifeworld of zoos and wildlife sanctuaries in the settler same embedded attitudes in the terraforming disruption. Australia and Aotearoa/New south. imaginary. With a brief survey of modern Zealand share histories of catastrophic examples and historical precedents, the impulse ecological change and biodiversity loss wrought Laura McLauchlan, University of NSW to ‘terraform’ in games will be located and through European settlement. They also share an ‘Care wars: making space for care-ful revealed as not especially ecological, and a interconnected lifeworld and a complex history conversations in species conservation practices’ brief counter-factual history of ecological of species transfer and management. gaming will be considered. Donna Haraway’s Situated Knowledges remains The paper attends to these histories, proposing a key text in the environmental humanities (1988). But what does it mean to take partial ------deepens a two-year case study to disclose and perspectives seriously in ethnographic practice? SESSION 9 Artists’ Roundtable | Ecological compose a toponymy of global shadow places (Candea 2011). Following my ethnographic Imaginaries for the idiolocal port of Townsville, Queensland. attention to both hedgehog conservation in the https://louiseboscacci.net United Kingdom and hedgehog culling in New Convenors: Zealand, this paper begins with the simple - Joshua Wodak, University of NSW Renata Ferrari Legorreta awareness that cares for species are deeply - Dominic Redfern, RMIT University My research aims to understand how marine contingent. However, despite this radical ecosystems work so that we can manage and contingency, we rarely experience our cares as Creative researchers are becoming increasingly conserve them better. As a Postdoctoral Fellow such. Indeed, though caring, one might find visible in the environmental humanities and this at the University of Sydney, I work with a oneself committed to deathly conflicts (Haraway area presents unique opportunities for multi- multidisciplinary group (from underwater robots 2008; Puig de la Bellacasa 2012:199; van disciplinary approaches to unpacking global to marine park managers) to understand the Dooren). Deconstruction of cares (whether one’s ecologies in relation to local impacts. Over two dynamics of the marine habitats inside own or others’) is also a potentially a deeply roundtable sessions, from Ecological Imaginaries and outside marine parks. This allows us to violent practice (Tamas 2009). Through a prism to Ecological Transformations, the participants understand temporal and spatial patterns in of care, hierarchies are strangely flattened. will share strategies and insights for creative biodiversity and ecosystem function. I use Ones allegiances start to look more than a little application to the conference foci. Through a images to investigate the underwater world, precarious. This paper will look both at how series of provocations and talking points, from which we can build 3D models and cares play out in particular hedgehog-human participants will look to the successes, and measure underwater habitat complexity. worlds, as well as the ways in which cares are potential, of creative research to re-imagine the often hidden under more authoritative ways of collective vision of our shared future. Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger’s work on the macro justifying the lives of the species we love. This and microscopic worlds and her installation paper will ask how we might take cares Pie Bolton is an artist/scientist engaged as an works looks to convey the juxtaposition of size seriously, even when we find them deathly MFA candidate at RMIT. Her work explores the and beauty, text, sound and film, exploring the opposition. interconnectedness of deep and shallow dynamics of the human influence upon evolution temporalities. Her multi disciplinary art practice within the Anthropocene. Laura McLauchlan is a PhD candidate in is focused through a scientific lens as she alters Her current work exploring the impact tourism anthropology with the Environmental Humanities and rearranges lithic fragments through ceramic and ocean debris on isolated islands has seen programme at the University of New South processes in order to guide understanding of Lea travel to places such as the Galapagos, Wales. Her thesis is based on fieldwork with the intersection between the geologic and the Lord Howe and Faroe Islands. hedgehogs and humans in urban Bristol (UK) human. Her investigations in materiality manifest and Wellington (NZ). Laura is as enigmatic objects examining perceptions of Forest Keegel has been a practising artist since particularly interested in questions the Anthropocene. 1992 and has spent over ten years creating of umwelt and interspecies slippages in artworks that evoke a sense of the landscape of multispecies spaces as well as questions of the Louise Boscacci is an artist-researcher and Victoria prior to white settlement and the gold politics of care and attachment. educator who thinks about and works in meeting rush. She often uses Indigenous plants and waste places of affect, ecology, (im)materiality, and paper to create ephemeral sculpture. She has ecoaesthetics. Projects involve a-bodied twenty years’ experience as a visual artist in encountering in field situations and the studio. Community Cultural Development. She has an Co-species, clay, sound, light and words Honours in Sculpture from Sydney College of converse in transversals of practice and the Arts and in 2014 she won the scholarship. Her roundtable talk lengthens and Sculpturescape award at Lorne Sculpture University of Sydney, in 2011. She has lived in creating a photo blog about the relationships Biennale. London and Munich and is now based in between cultivated and native plants, human, www.forestkeegel.com Sydney. Her work has been exhibited domesticated, wild and feral animals on and throughout Australia and internationally in around the Hawkesbury River, to think through Working in varying mediums, Janet Laurence Canada, China, Denmark, Japan and the UK. genres of environmental communication. Blogs, creates immersive environments that navigate through juxtaposition and irony, can complicate the interconnections between organic elements 3.30 – 5.00 the pristine “chocolate box” scenes that and systems of nature. Based in Sydney, ------characterise much tourist and wilderness Laurence is currently a Visiting Fellow at the SESSION 10 | Water imaginaries: photography. However, the ways in which University of NSW Art and Design and a 2016 multidisciplinary and multispecies perspectives viewers navigate the global landscape of social /17 Fellow of Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg media privileges the stand-alone image, (Institute for Advanced Study), Delmenhurst, This panel brings together humanities scholars particularly what Batchen calls “realist kitsch”: Germany. Laurence exhibits nationally and and artists who are researching the ways that technically perfect shots of sunsets, reflections or internationally and her work is included in peoples’ understandings of, and values birds in flight. Despite their limitations, such museum, university and corporate collections as associated with, water are shaped in relation images, as shown in the campaign against the well as within architectural and landscaped with other animals and plants. Each paper Franklin Dam, can be powerful signifiers of public places. draws on different sources and approaches, environmental value (Batchen, 2002). Tracing from photographically informed multispecies the flows of such “landscape pornography” Carolyn Lewens is an artist and curator with ethnography and the crafting of artistic (Giblett, 2007, 341) might help us imagine many years experience working solo, soundscapes, to the construction of waterways and their inhabitants in messier, collaboratively and in the community to produce environmental histories from archival traces. This more complex ways. complex ensembles of image, sound, data and panel aims to bring together these different text. The challenge of Climate Change and its approaches to enrich our understandings of Nicole Matthews is a lecturer in media and impact on local and global ecologies drives her water as a lively medium. cultural studies at Macquarie University in interdisciplinary approach. Carolyn’s most Sydney. Her books include Comic recent work comprises a series of small Panel Chair: Hollis Taylor, Macquarie University Politics (2000) and Judging a Book by its sculptures to highlight coral bleaching. Carolyn Cover (2007). She has published around has exhibited widely and has been the recipient Nicole Matthews and Jane Simon, Macquarie autobiographical media and education and numerous of grants and awards – notably The University disability studies. Digital Storytelling in Health Australia Council, Arts Victoria and Regional ‘The Hawkesbury on a chocolate box: from and Social Policy, written with Naomi Arts Victoria, CCP best work on an Berowrabackyard to Instagram’ Sunderland, is coming out with Routledge in Environmental Theme, in Black & White and 2017. [email protected] Linden Postcards. The visual richness of social media creates new opportunities for amateurs as well as journalists Jane Simon is Lecturer in Media Studies at Ainslie Murray is an interdisciplinary artist, and scientists to challenge the way the Macquarie University. She researches and architect and academic based in environment has been written about and teaches in media studies, visual cultural studies the Architecture Discipline in the Faculty of the imaged. Rod Giblett notes that celebrations of and photography. Jane has published articles Built Environment at UNSW. Her work explores biodiversity in Australian wilderness on amateur and experimental film, the augmentation of architectural space through photography have generally documented photography, artist's books and modes of subtle realisations of forgotten and intangible “individual species in isolation from their writing about visual culture. Jane completed her spatial forces. Ainslie was awarded her PhD in habitat” and from human intervention (2007, PhD in Gender and Cultural Studies at the Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, 343). This paper draws on the experience of University of Sydney and was a Visiting Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow in the Lorraine Shannon ------European Centre for Photographic Research at SESSION 11 | Art and Culture in an the University of Wales, Emily O’Gorman, Macquarie University Anthropocene Climate UK. [email protected] ‘Lively water: Histories of wetlands, birds, mosquitoes, and people in the Murray- Dr Prudence Gibson University of NSW Jane Ulman, Freelance sound artist Darling Basin’. ‘Hybrid Green Man: the Image of the Wild ‘Sweet Water, Salt Water, Sacred Sites’ Green Man as Ecological Warning’ This presentation features an audio work This paper examines how people’s relationship commissioned by the BBC. Through a collection with particular animals has shaped the values In an epoch of compromised ecologies and of words for water and the life it sustains, the that they have associated with wetlands at parallel changes in human perceptions of piece gives an insight into Aboriginal ecological multiple scales. It specifically explores shifting nature, this paper charts the development of the wisdom and respect for the land, the elements, wetlands imaginaries through changing Green Man or Foliate Face in art and plants and non-°©‐human animals. Languages understandings of mosquitoes and water birds architecture. The Green Man first appeared in of the first Australians have deep meaning and in the Murray-Darling Basin across the long France in the 1st century and flourished in British detailed word pictures. In this, the driest nineteenth century. Scientific proof of the life architecture in the 11–15th centuries. This inhabited country on earth, the many words for cycle of malaria in the late nineteenth century, pagan character was a Wildman, worshipped water show how precious and important water and subsequent research into other mosquito- as an apotropaic and benevolent spirit, has been here for thousands of years. Water is borne diseases, changed people’s relationships associated with fertility. This paper provokes an sacred, part of the Dreaming and an integral with watery landscapes, including irrigation inquiry into whether the leafy extrusions from connection to country and identity, protected by areas, as well as with mosquitoes. Wetlands Green Man’s mouth are a form of nonhuman Aboriginal law and custom. Everything travels were no longer just dangerous to go to but language, a means of communicating with the along the waterways. The people travel that could come out into the world, onto farms, and plant world, or merely a site of vegetal genesis way and cultures and languages travel with the into homes via these insects. At the same time, and agency. In contemporary visual art, the people. With words, songs and Creation stories wetlands have long been valued as water bird concept of the Green Man or the hybrid plant– from Nations and language groups across habitat by groups such as ornithologists and animal has emerged anew, no doubt in Australia, the work touches on continuity, later ecologists, with important and mixed response to climate change fears and dislocation and transformation in Australian political consequences. diminishing ecodiversities. Edourdo Kac’s Indigenous communities. A key part of the story Enigma, for instance, is a genetically modified is the crucial importance of water for a Emily O’Gorman is an environmental historian petunia flower, created from Kac’s DNA, sustainable future. Aboriginal peoples’ with interdisciplinary research interests within combining human and plant genes in the one opposition to large-scale degradation of the the environmental humanities. Her research plant. This paper draws on the plant philosophy environment and consequent loss of native focuses on how people have lived with rivers, of Michael Marder and traces the Green Man species is an end point in which the knowledge wetlands, and climates. Currently a Senior plant–human hybrid into the present, as a of millennia and the experiences since European Lecturer at Macquarie University, she holds PhD means of documenting the way nature thinks intervention converge. from the School of History at ANU and through humans. undertook a postdoctoral candidacy at the Jane Ulman is a freelance documentary maker Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Prudence Gibson teaches Creative Writing and and sound artist with an enduring interest in Research at the University of Wollongong. Media at UNSW. Her research covers art and recording Australian wildlife and the unbuilt [email protected] plant studies. Her 2015 book Janet Laurence: environment. Formerly a program maker with The Pharmacy of Plants was published by New ABC Radio Arts she produced documentary, South Publishing. Her next book, with drama, music, poetry, radio mix, soundscape Brill/Rudopi Publishing, is on plant studies and art, forthcoming 2018. Her new edited volume, (Ojala, 2012). Thus, ‘the Anthropocene’ and its The Covert Plant, will be published by Punctum Sarah Pirrie is an artist, curator, writer and universalised discourse of powerful, self Books in the USA in 2017. She is author of The Lecturer in Visual Arts at interested and inherently ecocidal humans could Rapture of Death 2010, Boccalatte Publishing University. Sarah’s work has referenced a function as a self fulfilling prophecy, as beliefs and has published over 300 essays. range of social and environmental issues and is that humans are destined to destroy the planet often shaped by local activity and phenomena. disempowers people to create alternative Sarah Pirrie, Charles Darwin University Recent collaborative research projects include futures. Baskin, J. (2015). Paradigm Dressed as ‘Sea of Runoff—the creative problematisation Waiting for Water, 2016, Counting Tidelines, Epoch: The Ideology of the Anthropocene. of anthropogenic objects’ co-curated with Dr Amy Jackett, 2015 and Environmental Values, 24, 9–29. Secret World: Carnivorous plants of the Howard Ojala, M. (2012). Hope and climate change: Collecting coastal refuse becomes a creative sand sheets, 2015 a Nomad Art production. the importance of hope for environmental exercise, exploring Nature as envisioned in a www.sarahpirrie.com.au engagement among young people. Top End Australian community. Coastal Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 625– encounters of anthropogenic perturbation offer ------642. doi: 10.1080/13504622.2011.637157 a critical examination of the ‘local’ SESSION 12 | Educating for Change Anthropocene providing creative direction for Blanche Higgins is currently completing a PhD an art making practice aimed at relating local Blanche Higgins, Monash University in education at Monash University, and has thoughts and actions to environmental ‘Hope, ‘humanity’ and the Anthropocene’ taught as a sessional academic at RMIT sustainability. This paper examines the University for six years. She is also a facilitator complexities of the Human/Nature nexus as In this presentation, I ask what impacts ‘the with Climate for Change and passionate about expressed through an art making practice that Anthropocene’ discourse is having. What social and environmental justice. includes the ecological phenomenon of waste does the idea that humans have unprecedented, and the relational activity of recycling. geological scale impacts enable or disable? Simon Lumsden, University of NSW Anthropogenic found objects such as discarded Using data from the tertiary, undergraduate ‘Veganism, Normative Change and Second drink bottles and spent detonators facilitate a RMIT social science course Climate Change Nature’ complex return to nature through their changing Responses that I taught in 2015, I show how status; moving from one purpose to another, one students’ understandings and performances of Reason is important to normative change, but in environment to another, one meaning to ‘the human’ and ‘humanity’ influence their itself it is not enough to achieve wholesale another. Understanding this ‘Return to Nature’ feelings of hope or despair about the future. normative change. Understanding the difficulties paradigm allows for a problematisation of For example, universalist depictions of involved in normative change requires an anthropogenic found objects and events in ‘humanity’ that normalise the patriarchal, appreciation of the role of second nature in the order for nature and culture to be defined colonial, white capitalist human subject authority of norms. This paper draws on the within a mutually dependent sphere. Critically responsible for ecological degradation - the account of second nature in Aristotle, Dewey these objects of encounter speak to an anthropos of the Anthropocene (Baskin, 2015) - and Hegel to examine the way in which norms interconnection of mimicry and materiality and leads students to feel overwhelmed and to become embodied. It discusses the implications invite new creative interpretations though despair about the future. In contrast, of this for both the authority of norms and how augmentation and installation art. Ultimately deconstructing this discourse through reference they can be changed. Using the example of these new envisioned Natures need to expand to Othered humans - for example, Indigenous, veganism it argues that changing norms requires beyond fixed events and lexicon into a non-Western, ‘third world’ people - enables more than just good reasons. The appreciation continuum, which allows endpoints and new students to envision alternative futures. Emotions of the role of second nature in culture allows us beginnings, but significantly enabling these to like hope and despair influence our sense of to: firstly, better conceive the difficulty and exist within bigger systems over time and space. empowerment and environmental actions resistance of individuals to changing norms because of the material resilience of norms, states and attitudes and concluding with choices environmental vitalism and essentialism, has habits and customs in a culture. Secondly, it and the resulting behaviours. Represented as an been both identified and subject to critique argues that the effective adoption of a new onion‐like diagram, this framework interweaves since the 1930s. This paper argues that there is norm such as veganism or the behavioural some of the most accepted theories and meta‐ also a North Island myth; one that in contrast to change necessary to respond to something like analysis about the human conduct, providing an the South Island myth’s turn to the interior is climate change, requires not just more good integrated explanation of how our behaviours concentrated on a northern, coastal environment reasons but the creation of material pathways originate and unfold. and its ecologies. In further contrast to the South in the culture in which those revised norms can Island myth of dislocated Europeans in a be inhabited. This contribution is a new referent useful for ESD sublime wilderness where, problematically, researchers and practitioners to design learning Maori are taken to be absent, the North Island Simon Lumsden is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy experiences focused on the encouragement of myth works toward an articulation and claim of at UNSW. His research is primarily on German introspection and reconceptualization of the Europeans becoming a new Pacific people. A Idealism, Phenomenology and Poststructuralism. meaning of being a human, enabling the second theme is the impact of the North Island He has published widely on these areas and is potential deep transformation of the individual forest clearances as expressed in North Island most recently author of Self-Consciousness and and ultimately the broader society, toward a art and writing. These themes of course continue the Critique of the Subject: Hegel, Heidegger, more sustainable way of being. the post-colonial issue of linking political and and the Post-Structuralists, (Columbia University cultural claims and identities to ecological Press, 2014). Emilia de la Sienra is from Mexico City, where imaginaries and impacts. This paper traces the she grew up and became a Biologist. She also history of the North Island myth as the so-far Emilia de la Sienra, University of Technology gained postgraduate qualifications in unnoticed other strand of ecological imaginary Sydney Environmental Management and Environmental in New Zealand cultural nationalism, noting its ‘Worldviews as virtual realities hiding the Education. Today she is about to finish her PhD origin in writers such as ARD Fairburn in the potential of human behaviour: a fundamental in Sustainable Futures at the University of 1930s and how it assumed a type of nationalist construct for the fulfilment of the goals of the Technology Sydney. She has worked for hegemony from the 1950s. Education for Sustainable Development’ governmental, social and educational institutions in Mexico and some other countries. She had Mike Grimshaw is an Associate Professor in the The latest results in Education for Sustainable her own consultancy for seven years, where she Sociology department, University of Development (ESD) reveal an emerging area of specialized in environmental education and Canterbury. He works at the intersections of research and practice based on the exploration training. Today, her main areas of interest are religion, continental thought and cultural and of worldviews and its relationship with human worldviews, psychology and behavioral change. literary history. behaviour, and how these two dimensions can evoke the deep transformation of the self and the meanings of the human experience. This ------Arka Mondal, National University of Singapore paper offers a transdisciplinary framework to SESSION 13 | Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Myths, ‘Investigating Eco-(in)justice: Subaltern Identities describe the formation and expression of this Concepts and Challenges and Nature in Amitav Ghosh’s Fictions’ mental construct as a layered phenomenon that determines the wide range of human conduct. Mike Grimshaw, University of Canterbury Two different fields, postcolonialism and The core layer includes the neural circuits ‘Mangroves and Mudflats: The North Island ecocriticism combine to challenge the imperialist spread across the body; the next layer involves Myth?’ modes of environmental and social dominance: the embodied cognitive creation of a a kind of dominance termed as “ecological worldview; and the following three layers show In Aotearoa–New Zealand literary and cultural imperialism” and “environmental racism” by its potential expression, starting with mental studies, the South Island myth, a claim of British environmental historian Alfred Crosby and American environmental philosopher Deane plays in imagining viable ecological http://embodiedmedia.com/ Curtin, respectively. Such a challenge is posed communities, and furthering the cross-cultural by writers belonging to the developing world, understanding of the links between British, Chantelle Bayes is a creative writer currently where the environmental disputes are at their American and Indian literatures. living in the ACT. She recently submitted a PhD peak. Writers like Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati at Griffith University consisting of a novel and Roy, Zakes Mda, Ramachandra Guha among ------exegesis exploring nature/culture relationships others, use counter-development narrative SESSION 14 Artists’ Roundtable | Ecological in cities. Her work has been published in Axon techniques to underscore the existence of Transformations and Unreal Estate and performed at the alternative social and environmental Brisbane, Newcastle and Melbourne Emerging knowledge(s) that are not acknowledged and Convenors: Writers Festivals. necessarily understood by the development - Joshua Wodak, University of NSW experts in the West. Pablo Mukherjee, Deane - Dominic Redfern, RMIT University Brogan Bunt has a background in media art. His Curtin and Robert Young consider such critical current work involves aspects of writing, intervention by writers, as a form of activism Creative researchers are becoming increasingly photography and lived action. He has produced and critique of colonialism, thereby endorsing visible in the environmental humanities and this the spatial-exploratory documentary Halfeti— the fact that post-colonial literatures are “eco- area presents unique opportunities for multi- Only Fish Shall Visit (2001), software projects socialist” in inspiration. disciplinary approaches to wicked problems. such as Ice Time (2005), Um(2009) and Loom Keeping this in view, this paper makes a Broadly divided between Ecological (2011), a book, Risking Code: the Dilemmas comparative analysis of Amitav Ghosh’s The Imaginaries & Ecological Transformations our and Possibilities of Software Art (2008), and Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide and The Calcutta roundtable sessions will network creative the blog-based work, A Line Made By Walking Chromosome from a post-colonial eco-critical researchers (and those concerned with creative and Assembling Bits and Pieces of the perspective, to underscore his allegiance to responses to the conference foci) and facilitate Bodywork of Illegally Dumped Cars Found at social and environmental justice. It discusses the a sharing of strategies and insights for creative the Edge of Roads and Tracks in the Illawarra author’s continuous engagement in “writing application. Through a series of provocations Escarpment (2013). wrongs” to accentuate the exploitation of the and talking points, participants will consider the WOTI website: http://walking-upstream.net marginalized groups and the spaces (natural successes, and potential, of creative research to world) in which they dwell. By underscoring the re-imagine the collective vision of our shared Lucas Ihlein works with social relations and novelist’s use of counter discourses to both future. communication as the primary media of his contest the elitist western development policies creative practice. He works across a range of and acknowledge indigenous forms and media, often in collaboration, and is knowledge(s)/voices, the paper concludes that Keith Armstrong is an experimental artist a founding member of SquatSpace and Big Fag his literatures are aesthetics committed to profoundly motivated by issues of social and Press. His work has been included in major environmental politics. ecological justice. He has specialised for over exhibitions at ACCA, MCA Australia, and twenty years in collaborative, experimental AGNSW. Lucas recently completed The Arka Mondal is a PhD scholar and Teaching practices with emphasis upon innovative Yeomans Project in collaboration with Ian Milliss, Assistant in the Department of English Language performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, and in 2015 Ihlein and Milliss began a new and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Social networked interactive installations, alternative project, Sugar vs the Reef. Sciences, National University of Singapore, interfaces, art-science collaborations and WOTI website: http://walking-upstream.net Singapore. His doctoral project investigates the socially and ecologically engaged practices. He British, American and Indian romantic poets in has led and created over sixty major art works Tania Leimbach completed her PhD last year an ecological context. It aims at contributing to and process-based projects, which have been through the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the apprehension of the role that literature shown extensively in Australia and overseas. the University of Technology Sydney. Tania is interested in the role that civic spaces play in open mics, slams and in theatres for many ------social change and how public institutions years. In 2015 she gave a TEDx talk at James POSTGRAD SLAM—Five Minutes with… engage with contested debates. Her Cook University and participated in the Convenor: Marie McKenzie, University of interdisciplinary research crosses art and design Tropics>Tropics arts tour to Johor Bahru in Sydney theory with museum studies and environmental Malaysia. Helen’s PhD is being supervised by Moderator: Iain McCalman, University of sustainability. Her current research involves a Adjunct Professor Stephen Torre of Sydney review of sustainability education in the tertiary University in Cairns. sector and looks at developments in the www.helenr.com Kathrin Bartha, Monash University (Melbourne) integration of sustainability into tertiary and Goethe University (Frankfurt). curriculum across disciplines and diverse Roslyn Taplin is an environmental artist and ‘Nature as Haunted House: The Ecogothic in learning contexts. scientist. Her creative outputs include drawing, Australian Fiction of the Anthropocene’ digital photography, video and installation. In Ilka Blue Nelson was born on Ngunnawal many of her works, she explores the use of My paper examines Australian fiction that falls Country (Canberra, Australia) but has since glyph or textual information in speeches and under the genre of what has been termed the been wandering. Ilka practices as a creative documents about the environment and climate ‘Ecogothic’, or Ecogothic elements in texts ecologist, mixing together mythology, quantum change. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of dealing with ecological crisis. The Ecogothic has physics, systems thinking and creative Environmental Art at University of New South been defined as exploring the intersections knowledge, to reenchant connections between Wales (UNSW) Art & Design. Ros’s art research between Gothic studies and ecocriticism, and people and place. Her work is anchored in focus is on environment, sustainability and can be said to be representing ‘Nature’ as a Latorica (www.latorica.net), a transdisciplinary climate change. She has held academic positions kind of character, a haunted house. In the studio that engages storytelling as an at UNSW Sydney, Bond University and context of topical concepts such as the adaptation tool to remediate the cultural roots Macquarie University. Anthropocene and climate fiction, it is of ecocide. fascinating to draw attention to this genre and Kim Williams works in multimedia installation, critical angle. Unlike much of speculative fiction, Perdita Phillips works with objects, environments sculpture, and drawing. She has held solo the Ecogothic does not necessarily situate and found things to create worlds where exhibitions at Wollongong Art Gallery, climate change into the distant future. Rather, it everyday entities and events are brought out of Maitland Regional Gallery, the University of connects today’s ecological problems to the their invisibility. Her 2016 exhibitions include Wollongong and Broken Hill Regional Art past, present and future by animating the Radical Ecologies, (PICA) and enhancement: Gallery and participated in numerous group history of environmental damage with spectres MAKING SENSE (i3S, Universidade do Porto), shows and collaborative projects. Kim has of various kinds, by dramatizing ecocide, or by among others. Phillips’ PhD (2007) investigated recently begun a PhD, researching strategies of staging it as the return of the repressed. My the relationship between scientific and artistic social engagement and collaboration in large paper will define the ‘Ecogothic’ aesthetic in fieldwork, and she has published widely on this and small-scale environmental projects, relation to the (post)colonial Gothic genre and theme. She has also worked with SymbioticA including Sugar vs the Reef and Walking Ecocritical theory in order to contemplate its (The University of Western Australia) on two Upstream: Waterways of the Illawarra. usefulness in the context of Australian cultural Australia Council funded projects. WOTI website: http://walking-upstream.net texts. Crucial to this discussion are Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives in film and Helen Ramoutsaki is a performing poet living in literature. Far North Queensland, where the unique environment of the Wet Tropics Region has Kathrin Bartha is currently writing her PhD on become one of her great fascinations. Helen has the Ecogothic within the Joint PhD programme been performing her original work at festivals, between Monash University (Melbourne) and Goethe University (Frankfurt). She graduated Michael Chew is an action-researcher, of geographical boundaries, collapse of from Freie Universität Berlin. Her research environmentalist and community cultural nature/culture dichotomies, and the beginning interests are Postcolonial studies, the Gothic and development practitioner with degrees in Art of a new era of (non)human (hi)story Thus it Ecocriticism. She has published on German- Photography, Mathematical Physics, Humanities looks forward in many ways to the modern Jewish memory, Australian literature, and and Social Ecology. He co--founded the NGOs anthropocene narrative. migrant experiences. Friends of Kolkata, and Friends of Bangladesh to run international volunteer programmes and Morteza Hajizadeh is a PhD student at the Michael Chew, action-researcher, solidarity North-South solidarity work, and has University of Auckland. His PhD thesis is focused environmentalist and community cultural run participatory photography projects in India, on ecofeminism, gender, and British gothic development practitioner Indonesia, East Timor and Bangladesh. Michael literature of the late 18th and 19th century. He ‘Images of hope, images of change: is currently pursuing doctoral research in is also researching on the intersection of participatory approaches to north–south climate participatory visual methods and climate pollution and the rise of urban gothic literature solidarity’ adaptation at Monash University. in mid-Victorian era. https://monash.academia.edu/MChew Environmental advocacy photography has Emma Holloway, University of New South tended to rely on simplified and polarised Morteza Hajizadeh, University of Auckland Wales emotions of either fear in polarised images of ‘Mary Shelley’s Ecological Anthropocene and ‘‘Trees not trams’: The right to nature and the despoiled landscapes or hope in the form of the End of Human History’ rights of nature in the framing of environmental pristine wilderness, both reproducing activism around fig tree removal on Sydney's nature/culture divides which are becoming Anthropocene is a fluid term to define and its Anzac Parade’ increasingly untenable in the anthropocene era. acknowledgement as the beginning of a new Participatory visual methods have the potential Geological Time Scale has remained a The removal of over 800, 150-year-old to generate images and social relations which contested point. Nevertheless, the literary Moreton Bay fig trees in Sydney’s east to make open up deeper engagement with the response to this phenomenon has been prolific. way for a light rail corridor has been a highly complexities of nature‐culture relations. The concept of anthropocene has fuelled the contentious issue, giving rise to passionate Furthermore, the shift of image authorship from production of a score of cli-fi novels which activism as people unite in an attempt to save the privileged outsider to the communities facing mostly feed the fantasies of an apocalypse as the trees. So, are the protestors fighting for the environmental hazards themselves gives a consequence of a flood, nuclear war, or other right to nature or the right of nature? In framing opportunity for self‐representations of hope. eco-disasters. Such apocalyptic tropes feature a their opposition to the removal of trees, activists Caution must be taken as these methods have radical shift in the relation of humans with their have used, sometimes interchangeably, substantive ethical, methodological, and living habitats. Anthropocene narratives may be language that suggests their community should practical complexities. The presentation will a twenty-first century phenomenon, but such have a right to green spaces, and also draw upon images and methods from the environmental awareness had its precedent in language that suggests that the trees themselves doctoral action-research project Climate 19th century England. Mary Shelley’s The Last are of inherent value. I will undertake a Resilience Media Exchange, which explores Man (1826) is an early example of a cli-fi discourse analysis of rights of trees and rights to mutual learning, human‐nature relations, and novel which uses the trope of apocalypse in the trees in order to deconstruct the language used climate justice in the context of participatory form of a global epidemic to draw attention to in fig tree activism, and gain an insight into visual dialogue between urban communities in the changing relations of humans with their different perspectives on the relationship Bangladesh, Australia and China who are environment. Shelley’s novel is a telling example between justice and nature. This analysis will responding to climate and environmental of a ‘geo-story’, to use Bruno Latour’s term, provide the basis for a wider examination of hazards. which highlights issues such as geopolitical how proponents of ecological justice in this turmoil, expansionism, mass immigration, erosion context might gain increasing recognition, legitimacy, and transformative influence, in Carolyn Lewens is an artist and curator ideas and criticism of the pastoral and the terms of both a) raising public support, and b) working solo and collaboratively to produce contemporary focus on ‘localism’ or prompting government action. Ultimately I will complex ensembles of image, sound and text. ‘bioregionalism’. Such an emphasis on the local argue that ecological justice proponents, whilst Photography is used as a starting point with has been the focus of criticism by transnational potentially sacrificing the strength of their imagery coming from solar cameraless theorists such as Ursula Heise, for failing to message, will often gain greater tactical and photography. Her works are a complex mix of attend to the way environments are shaped by strategic advantage from engaging with the literal and the phenomenal and global forces. The overlooked and oft pluralistic environmental and ecological justice problematise the digital through the uncanny of stereotyped work of the Western Australian coalitions. the analogue. They broadly canvass ideas at poet Randolph Stow will be analysed to work in cultural and scientific explanations of illustrate how such concepts can both help and Emma Holloway is a final year Law and nature, with particular focus on ecologies of hinder literary analysis. International Studies at the University of New light, water and life. She investigates the South Wales. She has a particular interest in properties and metaphors of light. As Caitlin Maling is a Western Australian poet issues around environmental and ecological blueprints for coming aquatic communities, they currently pursuing a in literature justice. speculate on what might exist down in the examining comparative ecopoetics of the USA oceanic depths and question what it means to and Australia. Her published work considers Carolyn Lewens, Artist & Curator be alive. Referencing solar abundance as poets such as William Carlos Williams, John ‘IN the Photic Zone’ potential for aquatic life and also her method Mateer, Brian Teare and Randolph Stow. of image production, she combines pre- This paper addresses aspects of my PhD project photographic processes with post-photographic Alanna Myers, University of Melbourne “In the Photic Zone”, an investigation into concerns in work she describes as ‘The limits of cosmopolitanism? Mediated intersections of art and science. My project photosynthetic. visibility and offshore oil and gas adapts scientific understanding to art practice developments’ to inform, challenge and sensually inspire environmental engagement. Referencing aquatic Caitlin Maling, Poet For a number of years, notions of the ecological environments and elemental processes, initial ‘Translocalism and Randolph Stow: can or carbon footprint have been effectively used images are solar Cyanotype photograms, consideration of the pastoral inform ideas of to draw attention to environmental justice issues ‘blueprints’ that mimic the notion of diagrams or localism and bioregionalism?’ and to make visible the connections between plans for the future. As cameraless naked places of extraction, production, consumption retinas they ‘eat’ the sun by converting solar The pastoral holds a contested space in and disposal that contribute to environmental energy to the photosynthetic and are ecocritical thinking, often positioned in a lineage degradation around the world. Coupled with paradoxical products of art/science. Drawn by of ways of conceptualizing nature which ideas growing research on transnational social shadows as much as light, their presence filled of ecopoetry are thought to have moved movements, such notions support the thesis of an with absence and desire, they contain traces of beyond, as in Terry Giffords’s nomination of the emerging ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ (Beck, 2004) things, memories of that time in the photic zone. term ‘post-pastoral’. Other critics such as that increasingly permeates social life and As aqueous allegory they recount stories of the Raymond Buell are more receptive to the meaningfully engages people in the fate of Sea and the loss of its bounty; as animated potential benefits of the pastoral impulse as a distant people and places. However, the materialisation of media these ecological way of reinscribing value to what is outside the cosmopolitan outlook has been critiqued for its imaginaries have chimerical potential; as plans human. This paper assesses how the pastoral alleged anthropocentrism (Latour, 2004), and of things to come they allow new possibilities continues to interact with ecocritical thinking, its capacity to facilitate concern for nonhuman for compelling narratives. proposing that there is an interesting and as well as human environments remains open to unexplored confluence between traditional question. For example, as yet little research has focused on the sites of offshore oil and gas managed in our nation’s capital. In exploring narrative fiction can contribute to environmental developments, which have untold impacts on the the lived experiences of dissenters from an dialogues. Expanding narrative expressions of marine species that inhabit the surrounding interspecies perspective, my research highlights water, particularly groundwater, remains an environment but which present significant the problems associated with the important contribution to expanding ecological structural barriers to access for activists, neoliberalisation of wildlife management and imaginings through the effects of climate journalists and researchers alike. This paper with the application of the ‘human dimensions’ change. seeks to explore the possibilities as well as the approach to the conflicts which have ensued. limitations of cosmopolitanism for bringing these Deborah Wardle, is a writer of fiction and largely invisible sites of extraction and Kathleen Varvaro is a doctoral candidate in memoir, with work published in The Big Issue, production into view. the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at Overland, Meniscus, and with Palliative Care Beck U (2004) The truth of others: a the Australian National University. Her area of Australia. She completed her Masters in cosmopolitan approach. Common Knowledge interest is human conflicts regarding Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at 10(3): 430-449. environmental issues and her research to date Melbourne University. Her current PhD research Latour B (2004) Whose cosmos, which has focused on controversies associated with at RMIT explores voices of the inanimate in cosmopolitics? Common Knowledge 10(3): 450- Australian fauna. She holds a Bachelor of fiction. 462. Science (Australian Environmental Studies), a Graduate Certificate in Outdoor and end Alanna Myers recently completed her PhD in Environmental Education and a Master of the Media and Communications program at the Applied Social Research. University of Melbourne. Her thesis examined media constructions of a contemporary Deborah Wardle, Writer environmental conflict in Australia, and ‘Groundwater’s Voices: How might Bakhtin’s explored how ideas of wilderness, place and concept of Heteroglossia in Narrative Fiction indigeneity were deployed and contested in reveal expressions for water bodies?’ and through such coverage. She is a In the context of the Anthropocene, fictional Postgraduate Representative and representations of more-than-human ‘things’ Communications Coordinator for ASLEC-ANZ. easily fall into the double-edged trap of either anthropomorphism or didacticism. How can Kathleen Varvaro, Australian National fiction writing express scientific knowledge, University bridging the gap between art and climate ‘Witness to the feast: The politics of grazing in science? Whether humans can speak for the Australian Capital Territory’ elements of the non-human world remains contested in fiction and in politics. In light of The burgeoning human population and our these conundrums, this paper expands upon rapacious appetite for land and other resources Bakhtin’s concept of ‘heteroglossia’ and how the increasingly bring us into conflicts with other ‘dialogic imagination’ can reveal a relationship species and with each other regarding the with language which enables fictional relationships we have with those species. representations of the multiple voices of the Drawing upon the contestations associated with more-than-human world. The paper draws upon Eastern grey kangaroos in the Australian examples from Australian and international Capital Territory, my research examines the literature, as well as my own work as a fiction ways in which environmental conflict has been writer, to illustrate how the language of ABSTRACTS AND BIOS and by Helen Macdonald in The Financial Times 1.00 – 12.30 as “moving, careful, humane and beautifully ------written”. Other nature writing by Richard has SESSION 1 PANEL | Human-Nonhuman Animal been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published Relations – Exploring the Boundaries in BBC Wildlife, Poetry Review and Granta. He Thom van Dooren, University of NSW was awarded the 2012 Roger Deakin Prize by ‘Provisioning Crows: Ecologies of Hope in the the Society of Authors, and has twice received the Mariana Islands BBC Wildlife Award for Nature Writing. Now extinct on the island of Guam, the Aga or KEYNOTE | James Bradley Mariana Crow can only be found on the small ‘Storytelling in the Anthropocene’ island of Rota. There too, its numbers are in serious decline, driven by a range of factors Writing about a world transformed by human including habitat loss and introduced predators. FRIDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2016 agency offers unique challenges for writers and But direct and deliberate persecution by local artists. How do we make sense of a world so Chamorro people is also a major component of KEYNOTE | Richard Kerridge fundamentally disrupted? What might fiction this story. Driven both by frustration and a ‘Ecocriticism’s Practical Challenges for Writers’ that explores and expresses experiences, practical desire to keep crows off their lands— perspectives and time scales that exceed the to avoid the conservation restrictions on This paper will discuss the practical and human look like? And is all fiction Anthropocene livelihoods and land practices that are now technical challenges that ecocritical ideas pose fiction now? bound up with these feathery bodies—many for creative writers, and will focus on ways in local people have taken to killing aga, or at the which these challenges can be explored in James Bradley is a novelist and critic. His books very least removing their nesting and food Creative Writing workshops. I will look at three include the novels, Wrack, The Deep Field, The trees. As one Chamorro man succinctly put it to recent movements in ecocritical theory—new Resurrectionist and most recently Clade, which me in an interview: “Our development has been materialism and biosemiotics, scale theory and was shortlisted for a number of major literary held back because of these issues.” Another postcolonial ecocriticism—and ask what writers awards, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and added: “We’re living in a primitive age again.” should do, specifically, in response. The paper The Penguin Book of the Ocean. In 2012 he won Taking the Aga as a guide, this paper explores will outline these ideas, and some foundational the Pascall Prize for Australia’s Critic of the these interfaces of development and workshop concepts, such as ‘point of view’ and Year, and he has been shortlisted for this year’s conservation on Rota through a specific lens, ‘show, don’t tell’, before converting the Bragg Prize for Science Writing. His first book that of hope. Tracking some of the many modes theoretical ideas into technical problems and for younger readers, The Altered Child, will be of imagining and enacting futures that local exploring those problems through examples published in 2017. people and the crows themselves are taking up, taken mainly from recent nature writing. this paper offers an understanding of hope as an ecological and worldly proposition, crafted Richard Kerridge is a nature writer and in and through specific webs of understanding ecocritic. Cold Blood: Adventures with Reptiles and relating that enable possibilities to take and Amphibians, (Chatto & Windus, 2014) his root, and perhaps even thrive, in the world. nature writing memoir, was adapted for BBC national radio and broadcast as a Radio 4 Thom van Dooren is a Senior Lecturer in Book of the Week in July 2014. It was Environmental Humanities at the University of described by James McConnachie in The New South Wales in Australia and co-editor of Sunday Times as “a minor classic.. exquisite” the international, open-access journal Environmental Humanities (Duke Violinist/composer, zoömusicologist, and distant and close reading, this paper analyses University Press). His most recent book is Flight ornithologist Hollis Taylor is a Research Fellow the relationship between setting, plot and Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of at Macquarie University. She previously held character in the Antarctic (eco)thriller. In doing Extinction (Columbia University Press, 2014). research fellowships at the Institute for so, it provides insight into the questions of scale www.thomvandooren.org Advanced Study in Berlin, the Muséum national so integral to literature of the Anthropocene. d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, and the University Hollis Taylor, Macquarie University of Technology Sydney. Taylor has an abiding Elizabeth Leane is Associate Professor of ‘Australian Avian Artists and the Discourse and interest in animal aesthetics, particularly vis-à- English at the University of Tasmania, where she Politics of Human Exceptionalism’ vis Australian songbirds. Her monograph, Is holds an ARC Future Fellowship split between birdsong music? Outback encounters with an the School of Humanities and the Institute for Are songbird aesthetic activities best identified Australian songbird, is forthcoming. She is Marine and Antarctic Studies. With degrees in as art, ‘art,’ proto-art, or functional endeavours? webmaster of www.zoömusicology.com. physics and literary studies, she is interested in Although by Darwin’s time the similarities bringing the insights of the humanities to the between human music and birdsong, for ------study of the Antarctic. She is the author of South instance, were well enough understood for him SESSION 2 | Global Songs of Ice and Snow: Pole: Nature and Culture, Antarctica in Fiction to suggest that they are evolutionary Antarctica in the Narrative World and Reading Popular Physics, and the co-editor analogues, in contemporary natural and social of Considering Animals and Imagining sciences as well as in the humanities, debates Elizabeth Leane, University of Tasmania Antarctica. In addition to her Antarctic work, her continue to swirl around the contention that ‘Global Plot, Local Action: Ice and the Antarctic research interests include literature and place; animal activities could fruitfully be considered (Eco)thriller’ the relationship between literature and science; as art. This report from the field surveys how and human-animal studies. humans make sense of avian activities in music, A tension between the local and the global lies dance, and visual art (chez Australian at the heart of many thriller novels: the Hanne Nielsen, University of Tasmania butcherbirds, lyrebirds, and bowerbirds) and conspiracy against which the hero must fight is ‘Melting Ice: Representations of Antarctica in what definitions and borders tell us about their often global in scope, but the action through Advertising’ makers. Characterisations that ignore extant which it is resolved is usually highly localized, in reports of animal abilities—of a blanket the form of individual combat. This disparity can Antarctica carries many symbolic resonances, classificatory posture—are common. I argue be symbolically resolved by locating the scene including heroism, purity, transformation, and instead for an evaluative approach that allows of combat in a place that physically evokes the extremity. In more recent times, Antarctica has us to drop the scare quotes and other linguistic opacity, complexity and mysteriousness of the been used to stand for a global climate system and theoretical contortions that would describe conspiracy. While in an urban thriller this might that is under threat – cue calving icebergs and songbird activities in these arenas. By be labyrinthine city streets, in the ecothriller it is melting ice. This paper examines overcoming the limitations of human frequently a natural setting: the subterranean representations of Antarctica as a fragile exceptionalism in analytic frameworks and darkness of a cave system or the dense environment, using close readings of several explicitly incorporating animal efforts into undergrowth of a jungle. In an ecothriller, case study advertisements. It aims to document theory development, validation, and revision moreover, the natural environment is and analyse the ways Antarctica has been put (theories too often dominated by human and simultaneously an actor in the narrative: the to work creating meaning in advertising, from elite Western concerns), we will arrive at a less- ultimate victim of the conspiracy plot as well as the metaphorical use of penguins to the distorted understanding of aesthetic activities a potential ally or enemy to the characters suggestion of “green” credentials via “ice- across species. negotiating its dangers. One favoured setting washing” techniques. Advertisements act as a for thrillers – and particularly ecothrillers – is shorthand for ideas already in cultural the Antarctic icescape. Using a combination of circulation (Williamson 1978), making them an ideal medium through which to explore with. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s ambiguous altered appearance and function. In 2010, a imagined versions of Antarctica. Most people notion of speculative fabulation, I argue that the traditional navigability declaration significantly will never actually go to Antarctica itself, so film enacts a realism of the possible to account increased the river’s recreational use. Since their versions of the place are informed by for how the Ice, as an everyday extreme, then, an unprecedented agreement has been various types of cultural production. As a result, confronts its inhabitants with problems of reached to pursue an ecological restoration imagined versions of Antarctica—such as those survival that make visible big quandaries about initiative costed at more than one billion dollars, presented in advertising campaigns—are even the future of habitable conditions for earthly focussed on re-engineering an eleven-mile more powerful than the physical continent of ice life. Modulated by the speculative this stretch of concrete infrastructure. People who itself. Through analysing key advertisements, provocation invites a recalibration toward a have for years been advocates for the river to this paper traces the emergence of ecological future‐facing cultural inquiry that enables be noticed, recognised, valued and used are concerns with “The Ice,” and helps to reveal the research to follow forked directions, to both now wondering just what this newfound public cultural frame through which we view respond to and anticipate phenomena. As a profile might mean for the river that has been Antarctica. material‐semiotic experiment the film draws on to them a source of spaciousness and identity. frameworks developed by feminist speculative This paper explores those tensions, using oral Hanne Nielsen is currently completing her PhD fiction writers to problematise in provocative history interviews with river-connected at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies ways global transitions such as the Angelenos who have walked, kayaked, (Tasmania, Australia), where she works on Anthropocene in ways that help us not only to explored, fished, and dreamed along the river’s representations of Antarctica in advertising. She critique and respond constructively to the course. Their reflections come at one of the most holds a Master of Antarctic Studies from the current predicament of socio‐ecological change, important anthropogenic turning points in the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, NZ), and but also anticipate the effects of global change river’s history, as an unprecedented degree of a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in processes and speculate in the subjunctive mode attention is paid to it by government, German Literature from the University of about the ‘what if’ and the ‘not as yet’. developers, environmentalists, non-profits, and Auckland (NZ). Hanne is on the Executive the community as a whole. Committee of the SCAR Humanities and Social Juan Francisco Salazar is an anthropologist Sciences Expert Group, and her research and documentary filmmaker. He is Associate Tilly Hinton is a PhD candidate at the interests include representations of the polar Professor in media and cultural studies at University of Technology, Sydney where she regions in literature, film, and cultural Western Sydney University. holds a UTS Chancellor’s Research Scholarship production; the commercial history of for Outstanding Potential. Her research is about Antarctica; and polar tourism. ------love and the Los Angeles River. She uses history SESSION 3 | Transforming Waterways: Creeks to understand how people relate to nature in Juan Francisco Salazar, Western Sydney and Rivers on Two Continents messed-up landscapes, finding stories of University Tilly Hinton, University of Technology Sydney baptism, paint, fishing, friendship, crime and ‘Speculative narratives of worlds to come in ‘The give and take of solace in ecological profound change. Tilly is also a Centre for Antarctica’ transformation’ Sustainability Leadership Fellow in the class of 2016. In this intervention I reflect on my experience The Los Angeles River is a concrete-encased experimenting with speculative narratives of watercourse, known to many as a backdrop for worlds to come in Antarctica. The focal point is action scenes in movies rather than a place to Catherine van Wilgenburg, Living Colour Studio the experimental documentary film I produced explore and belong in nature. Underneath this and Rob Youl, Landcare Australia titled Nightfall on Gaia (2015), which, I engineered façade is a landscape that has ‘Completing the Revegetation of Moonee Ponds suggest, enacts a form of generative provided space, solace and belonging to many, Creek’ ethnography through which to speculate futures despite or perhaps because of its excessively A visual presentation demonstrating an arts / Computershare’s eTree program promoting science interdisciplinary research collaboration C. Vision Mapping - a creative combination of major landscape change across Australasia. between Wurundjeri elders, Rob Youl Landcare emerging online mapping technology and Then in 2007–09 he was part of the small team International, eco artist Catherine van foresight visioning techniques with appreciative running CarbonSMART, Landcare Australia’s Wilgenburg, Melbourne Water, local and state enquiry. This method applies visioning in a geo- greenhouse gas sequestration program, which governments in conjunction with Friends of spatially rich way, leverage off online mapping closed recently. Rob has written numerous Moonee Ponds Creek and local communities will technology. articles and pamphlets on Landcare. On complete the revegetation of Moonee Ponds retiring, in 2010 he edited a book on the Creek in Melbourne’s West. D. Photo documentation of implementation of history of forestry education in Victoria, and the Vision for the complete revegetation of published another – by forest ecologist, Ron The visuals include: Moonee Ponds Creek. Hateley – on the vegetation of Victoria before European settlement. He chairs the small group, Catherine van Wilgenburg is a British-born Australian Landcare International and visual artist for whom connecting with the land in campaigns for biosinks – biolinks that pay a her own backyard of Melbourne’s West is a carbon income. Rob received an OAM in the way to decolonize her colonial baggage. Her 2012 Australia Day honours list. expanded visual art practice includes painting, installation, performance art and Brogan Bunt, Lucas Ihlein, Kim Williams – photography. A Friend of Iramoo Grassland University of Wollongong Reserve in St Albans, her work in revegetating ‘Walking Upstream: Waterways of the the endangered grasslands of Victoria’s Illawarra’ western volcanic plain has grounded her in the reality of Wurundjeri history. It has led to The collaborative project, Walking Upstream: collaborative site-specific eco artworks inspired Waterways of the Illawarra, is concerned with by deepening relationships with Wurundjeri the artistic negotiation of a particular local elders, environmental scientists and context of environmental transformation – the environmental activists. In 2011 she was finalist (Futures Action Model (Jose Ramos)) creek systems of the Illawarra region, New in the Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of NSW with South Wales. The creeks flow from the triptych ‘The Treaty’ and in 2015 the recipient escarpment to the sea through a mosaic of of the Martin Kantor Memorial Award (a section industrial, suburban and semi-rural A. FUTURES ACTION MODEL applied to the of the Maggie Diaz Photographic Award). complete revegetation of Moonee Ponds Creek development. How can we engage with them? Our approach is to walk the creeks – to start at in Melbourne’s North and West. This model Rob Youl is a 71 year-old forester who has forms the structure for the presentation, the beach and to follow the creeks upstream. worked since 1981 in farm forestry, We continue for as long as geography, connecting Melbourne’s emerging future revegetation, urban ecology and community population growth and economy to global topography, and social boundaries allow. We action, including with Greening Australia, walk in small groups with invited guests, taking responses such as climate change witnessed Conservation Volunteers Australia, and along suburban Moonee Ponds Creek. photographs and writing about the walks. The especially Landcare Australia Limited (LAL), the walks are structured as conversations in which last for over 13 years. From 1996 to 2007 Rob B. Community of Initiative Walk along the we collectively engage with neglected was Victorian projects officer for LAL, assisting everyday indices of environmental change. Our Moonee Ponds Creek from its source in groups and networks source corporate funds for Greenvale to its confluence with the Yarra river method is a form of ground-truthing and is major and minor programs, several of which he informed by contemporary socially engaged at Docklands. A short film will be screened. had helped initiate and develop, including art practice. In pursuing this project we Reef, investigating the relationship between space of tripartite conflicts between armed regularly encounter questions concerning the sugar cane farming and the Great Barrier Reef. youths of the region and the Nigerian military role of art in engaging with environmental Ihlein was recently awarded a DECRA forces in collaboration with the multinational oil issues. Recently we have entered into dialogue Fellowship (2016–2019). corporations. What follows largely as agitation with a local Bush Care group concerned with the against ecological pollution and degradation is regeneration of local creek systems. The group Kim Williams works in multimedia installation, not only indicative of the collective struggle for regards our project as congruent with their own sculpture and drawing. In the past six years, she survival of the oil-producing communities, but aims, raising questions for us about the has held solo exhibitions at Wollongong Art also of environmental insecurity in the region. relationship between art and environmental Gallery, Maitland Regional Gallery, the Exploring the subjectivities of these bio-political activism. This paper addresses the various University of Wollongong and Broken Hill conflicts, the purpose of this study is to examine ambiguities and uncertainties that have Regional Art Gallery. She has received a how the insurgency is culturally represented in emerged, arguing that they are aesthetically number of public art commissions and has also selected Nigerian plays, and how this and politically productive rather than disabling. been involved in numerous collaborative representation captures the material projects and community cultural development contribution of non-human nature in the history Brogan Bunt has a background in media art. projects, working creatively with communities in of the resistance, from pre-oil to oil-modernity His current work involves aspects of writing, the Illawarra. Her recent output has been in the region. The texts enlisted for this photography and lived action. He has produced generated from experiences of travelling along dissertation register the topography of the the spatial-exploratory documentary Halfeti— river systems and walking as a way of ‘ground region in a manner that draws on the site- Only Fish Shall Visit (2001), software projects truthing’ and locating a socially engaged specific and geomorphic forces in the such as Ice Time (2005), Um(2009) and Loom practice in the land. Later in 2016, she will performance of insurgency, and point to ways (2011), a book, Risking Code: the Dilemmas begin a PhD, participating in large and small- in which nature and the human subject are and Possibilities of Software Art (2008), and scale environmental projects to research art collectively embedded within the “pluriverse” of the blog-based work, A Line Made By Walking strategies of social engagement and the Delta. In contemplating the texts from the and Assembling Bits and Pieces of the collaboration. standpoint of what Bruno Latour describe as Bodywork of Illegally Dumped Cars Found at “relational epistemology” in which political the Edge of Roads and Tracks in the Illawarra In October 2015 their collaborative project agency is mapped on both sides of the Escarpment (2013). Walking Upstream: Waterways of the human/nature dualism, the research Illawarra was involved in the “Fluid States: interrogates the dominance of the Lucas Ihlein works with social relations and Performing Mobilities” conference in Melbourne, anthropocentric character of insurgency in the communication as the primary media of his exhibiting work at the Margaret Lawrence region, while foregrounding the spatial creative practice. His projects take the form of Gallery, VCA. configuration of the geography of the Delta as blogs, performances, field trips, re enactments, co-combatant in the historical contestation gallery installations and lithographic prints. He ------against the global oil capital. frequently works in collaboration, and is a SESSION 4: |Theatre of the Climate Metaphor founding member of artists groups SquatSpace Educated at the University of Calabar, Nigeria, and Big Fag Press. In the last five years his Ajumeze Henry Obi, University of Cape Town and University of Ghana, Legon, Ajumeze work has been included in major exhibitions at The ‘Theatre of the Bloody Metaphor’: The Bio- Henry Obi is the author of the poetry Collection Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, MCA politics of Violence in the Theatre of the Niger Dimples on the Sand (2009). Born in the Delta Australia, and the Art Gallery of NSW. Lucas Delta State of Nigeria, Ajumeze is currently a Ihein recently completed The Yeomans Project in Since the discovery of huge deposits of crude doctoral degree candidate at the Centre for collaboration with Ian Milliss, and in 2015 Ihlein oil in Nigeria in 1956, the creeks of the Niger African Studies, University of Cape Town, South and Milliss began a new project, Sugar vs the Delta have metamorphosed into a volatile Africa, with a research interest that intersects between postcolonial ecocriticism, Niger Delta lived experience. the rest of nature. environmentalism and indigenous African performance. Ajumeze is 2016/2017 Fellow of Helen Ramoutsaki is a performing poet living Camilla Flodin holds a PhD in aesthetics from Social Science Research in Africa (SSCR), and in tropical Far North Queensland. Her poetry- Uppsala University. At present, she is a member also winner of 2016 Ivan Karp Doctoral in-performance project Wet: an appetite for the of the Humanimal research group at the Centre Research Award. tropics synchronises spoken word with for Gender Research, Uppsala University. Her photojournalistic images to evoke the current research project compares Adorno’s Helen Ramoutsaki, James Cook University experience of living in the Wet Tropics Region. conception of the art–nature relation with ideas ‘Here and now not once upon a time and far Helen’s creative practice-led doctoral project is developed by the early German Romantics and away: bringing the climate-world home with being supervised by Adjunct Professor Stephen Schelling. cyclonic force’ Torre of James Cook University in Cairns. ------SESSION 5 | Ecological Imaginaries: City and Perceiving a changing climate-world requires a Camilla Flodin, Uppsala University Country long-term view, while the experience of what ‘Art and nature in Hölderlin’ Tim Ingold (2011) calls the ‘weather-world’ is Rod Giblett, independent researcher immediately present in a locality. Lowy Institute The question of humanity’s relationship to nature ‘A City and Its Wetlands: From Aztec City to polls of Australian public opinion from 2005 to preoccupied Friedrich Hölderlin’s philosophical, Mexico City—Homage to Eduardo Galeano, 2015 indicate that the degree of concern about poetological, and poetical works to a great 1940–2015’ anthropogenically influenced climate change is degree. Hölderlin is critical of the modern related to what is happening ‘now’ in the disenchanted conception of nature as an Many cities around the world were built on, or weather-world. Haig et al. (2014) indicate that external object completely devoid of (intrinsic) beside, wetlands. These cities include Venice, the pattern of severe tropical cyclone activity in value and entirely explainable in terms of Paris, London, Petersburg, Berlin, Hamburg, Australia has changed since the industrial causal relations. The separation of humanity Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, New revolution, tying in with predictions of lower from nature has involved the metaphysical Orleans and Toronto. In Cities and Wetlands frequency but higher intensity cyclonic events; conception of nature as a thing to be mastered (Giblett, 2016) I devote a chapter each to all yet the impact of such long term effects is less and has allowed for an increasing destruction of these cities. All of these cities drained or immediately palpable than the visceral impact of the environment that constitutes the concrete filled these wetlands. An exception to this rule is of being present in a cyclone. While extreme condition of possibility for humankind as well as the city of Tenochtitlan, the fabled floating weather events like severe tropical cyclones are for other species. But the separation is not wetland city of the Aztecs, remnants of which periodic, bioregionally restricted and make absolute, and Hölderlin argues that art and remain in Mexico City today. In the second dramatic national and global headlines for a aesthetics are crucial for reconceiving the chapter of Cities and Wetlands and in this limited time, creative arts have a role in relationship between nature and humankind. In paper I trace the history of Tenochtitlan as an recalling them into a more widespread present several of his poems Hölderlin also offers a exemplary instance of a city built on wetlands awareness. As a case study, this paper dialectical presentation of the art–nature and consider the investigates and illustrates the development of relation, and shows art’s ability to remember current conservation struggles going on in an immersive intermedial poetic evocation of nature. This remembrance is an Mexico City today. In doing so, I draw Cyclone Ita, which struck Queensland’s tropical acknowledgement of humankind’s dependence principally on the work of, and pay homage to, north in 2014. Taking Caribbean poet Kamau on concrete sensuous nature. I argue that Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan write, who Brathwaite’s challenge of how to approximate Hölderlin’s views can be helpful for achieving a sadly passed away last year. the environmental experience of such events, conception of nature that is both non-reductive key strategies have emerged for innovative and anti-dualistic, while still maintaining Rod Giblett is an independent researcher poetic form and content based on the author’s humankind’s particular responsibility towards based in Melbourne. He has published many articles and books in the transdisciplinary Advocating for local over global ecologies, photojournalism and the visualarts have environmental humanities, notably People and they position the Anthropocene not simply as an represented mining over the past 20 years. It Places of Nature and Culture (Intellect Books, impoverished geological epoch, but also as a asks: have visual representations of mines, 2011). His paper is drawn from a chapter in his creative era marked by renewed and hyper- including coal mines, function ed as an recently published book, Cities and Wetlands: localised ecopoetic forms of place-making; a irrefutable evidence for the destructive effects The Return of the Repressed in Nature and necessary stage so that our relationships with of corporate capitalism on the purity of the Culture (Bloomsbury, 2016). place can be (re)invented as we surpass Australian environment? Or, on the other hand, unsustainable colonial imaginings. have they been deployed to create distance Camille Roulière, University of Adelaide from responsibility, to assert the moral rightness ‘Love Thy River: loss and place-making in Camille Roulière is a PhD candidate at the J. or goodness of continuous resource extraction? Murray River Country (Australia)’ M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice (University of Adelaide). Her research centres Paolo Magagnoli is a Lecturer in the School of Unsustainable water management practices on spatial poetics, and she investigates the links Communication and Arts at the University of have placed Murray River Country under between place and art in Lower Murray Queensland. He writes widely on modern and unprecedented environmental threat. This Country (South Australia). Her academic contemporary art and visual culture, presentation argues that some Aboriginal interests range widely from spatial and documentary photography and video. He is the responses to this threat epitomise alternative environmental humanities to Indigenous studies author of Documents of Utopia: The Politics of approaches to sustainably engage with and and ethnomusicology. Experimental Documentary (Columbia University make place through remembering and Press: 2015). His essays have been published in mourning. 1.30 – 3.00 academic journals such as The Oxford Art Using visual supports, the analysis of these ------Journal, Third Text, Afterall, Philosophy of responses’ commonalities demonstrates that their SESSION 6 |Transformative Discourse: The Photography, and the Journal of Chinese imaginings of nature-culture relationships Power of Coal Contemporary Art. highlight the paradoxes of future-oriented and geographically-disembodying governmental Paolo Magagnoli, University of Queensland Rebecca Pearse, Australian National University attempts to scientifically and economically deal ‘'It's the Pride of Australia's Past, and the Pride & Linda Connor, University of Sydney with environmental degradation on a global of Its Future': the Visual Culture of Mining and ‘Land, coal and conflict: Scale-making on the scale. Relying on marginalised stories of Australian Nationalism’ Liverpool Plains’ Australian environmental design, these responses focus on the present, local and socio- The mining pit can be considered as one global Coal expansion in Australia can be understood cultural. Environmental degradation becomes and iconic image of the Anthropocene era as a reconstruction of space-time. As new sites both a challenge and an opportunity: a site of insofar as it signifies the emergence of the of coal development open up, new forms of (cultural and ecological) crises and creations. human species as a geophysical force. It also uneven development, cultural loss and social re- Continuity and permanence are not achieved plays a crucial role in the imaginary of the organisation follow. Conflicts over mineral through fixing nor restoring, but through a Australian landscape and the nationalist ownership, regulation, wealth distribution and process of transformative and opaque discourses on Australian exceptionalism: pictures the ‘externalities’ of coal production determine resilience. Such responses are not about caring, of mines evoke the heroic work ethic of the the scale at which crises propelled by coal but loving; connecting on an intimate level with Australian people as well the inevitable commodification are resolved. Rather than places while paradoxically being strengthened destiny of the nation. The paper is part of an understanding scale as anontologically fixed by global networks. ongoing research project that aims to provide ‘level’ at which conflict over coal occurs, scale the first detailed and comprehensive historical should be seen as an unfolding process of socio- analysis of the ways corporate advertisement, ecological struggle. This paper reports on a two-year ethnography in communities situation local understandings and actions in relation to of different areas of socio-ecological life, with near greenfield coal mine proposals on the environmental change. She is currently an a focus on climate and energy policy. Liverpool Plains in NSW. This coal commodity investigator on an ARC funded project The Coal frontier has produced friction between the Rush and Beyond: A Comparative Study of Coal ------local-global ambitions of traditional owners, Reliance and Climate Change. SESSION 7 | Ecological Histories of Philosophy farmers with long colonial settler histories, www.coalrush.net regional town business people, Federal and Stephen Healy, University of NSW State parliamentarians, Chinese government Gareth Bryant, University of Sydney ‘The Environmental Humanities and Natural officials, and environmentalists. In the course of ‘The limits of renewable energy capital’ Science—Practice, Policy and Beyond’ contestation over new coal developments, debates have raged over the scalar distribution In two recent and influential publications, Naomi The Anthropocene’s illumination of the planetary of mine ownership, flow-on economic benefits, Klein (2014) and Andreas Malm (2016) identify altering capacities of humanity has been cultural loss and socio-ecological risks of mining major contradictions between renewable interpreted as suggesting an imperative to development. Participants in the struggle are energy and capitalism. For Malm, the conflict engage with Geoscience, but this paper activating competing global, national, and resides in the biophysical properties of solar suggests further engagement. The specific regional scalar claims - what Anna Tsing calls and wind energy, while for Klein the key potential of other scientific domains, such as ‘scale-making projects’. The case of conflict over problem is neoliberal ideology. For both, the Biogeochemistry, are explored and shown to land and coal on the Liverpool Plains reminds us solution to each is comprehensive state planning. offer exciting opportunities. A note of caution is, that the global flow of coal capital is not However, the notion that renewable energy however, sounded regarding the totalising, and homogenous nor is it impervious to resistance. faces biophysical or ideological limits is often globalising, posture of natural science, Further, local claims and mobilisations also challenged by the active role of states in which is all to commonly echoed in the policy conjure forms of globalism as the terms of producing the congruence between fossil fuels domain. Much of the strength of the commodification become (un-)settled. and capitalism, including in the neoliberal era. Environmental Humanities lies in its intimacy with Drawing on Jason W. Moore’s (2015) world place and circumstance, exemplified by many Rebecca Pearse is Postdoctoral Fellow in the ecology framework, I contrast this history with developments within the Environmental School of Sociology at ANU, and an honorary the current state of renewable energy policy Humanities. Situated engagements with technical associate at UTS contributing to the Coal Rush around the world. According to Moore, disciplines, playing on this strength, are and Beyond ARC project (www.coalrush.net). capitalist expansion is underpinned by advocated and discussed through the lens of a Rebecca’s research is guided by her interest in expansions in the appropriation of particular example, underscoring the potential socio-ecological change and inequalities. She uncommodified nature. While states supported for constructive local engagement with both has expertise in the political economy of climate the development of fossil capitalism by placing scientific practice and policy. The transcendence and energy policy, social responses to limits on the commodification of fossil energy, of contemporary technocracy, and its attendant environmental change, feminist theory and dominant market-based climate policies seek to problems, necessitates a reform of science’s gender relations, and the sociology of support the development of renewable energy self-understanding and practice, one means to knowledge. capital. I argue that current obstacles to which are emergent engagements of the forms decarbonisation can be located within discussed here. Linda Connor is Professor of Anthropology at contradictions created by this commodification the University of Sydney. Her current research of socio-ecological reproduction. Stephen Healy escaped from a technical centres on the anthropological study of climate training by working for Greenpeace change, place and community, focussing on Gareth Bryant is a Lecturer in the Department International in London and an academic post, climate change activism and impacts of coal of Political Economy at the University of in Science and Technology Policy, in the UK. He mining and coal seam gas extraction, as well as Sydney. His research explores the marketisation transferred, back, to UNSW via a short stint at the NSW EPA, drafting a briefing paper for Dalia Nassar is Lecturer in Philosophy at the form our worlds. Over Many Horizons (O|M|H) their executive’s corporate planning process. University of Sydney. She works on the history therefore also challenges institutional capacities Currently a member of UNSW’s Environmental of German philosophy, the philosophy of to support a new kind of inter, cross and trans- Humanities program his interests meander from nature, aesthetics and environmental philosophy. disciplinary collaboration. If successful, it will a focus on energy and its politics through to the Her first book on the philosophical foundations facilitate an ambitious aim to promote nuanced affective challenges of the Anthropocene. of German Romanticism is titled The Romantic communication about environmental decline, Absolute: Being and Knowing in German while fostering the collective capacity to Dalia Nassar, University of Sydney Romantic Philosophy 1805-1804 (Chicago, address such decline. This case study explores ‘What can the history of philosophy tell us 2013), and she is the editor of The Relevance the complexity of designing and curating about “ecology” and the environmental crisis?’ of Romanticism: Essays on German Romantic contemporary events within a university context. Philosophy. With Luke Fischer she co-edited a It highlights forces of stasis and transformation Although there has been quite a bit of work special section of the Goethe Yearbook on within a specific institutional setting and done on the role that the study of history, Goethe and Environmentalism, and with Stephen considers more generally the place and literature and culture can play in the Gaukroger she co-edited an issue of Studies in capacity of learning institutions to become sites environmental humanities, there has been little History and Philosophy of Science on Kant and for the mediation of contemporary ecological consideration of what the historical study of the Empirical Sciences. She is currently writing a dialogues. philosophy can contribute to these discussions. book on the philosophy of nature from 1780– There are several reasons for this; the primary 1850. Tania Leimbach completed her PhD last year one, however, might have to do with the fact through the Institute for Sustainable Futures at that philosophy and its history are often the Tania Leimbach, University of Technology, the University of Technology Sydney. Her source of the problematic accounts of nature Sydney interdisciplinary research crosses art and design that have long justified the human domination of ‘Curating Ecological dialogue within the theory with museum studies and environmental the earth and the instrumentalisation of its university context: over many horizons sustainability. Tania is interested in the role that resources. Despite this, I contend that the history (O|M|H)’ civic spaces play in social change and how of philosophy plays a significant and under- This paper considers how sustainability public institutions engage with contested appreciated role in the environmental imperatives activate cultural conversations and debates. Her current research involves a review humanities, and my aim in this paper is to political processes, looking closely at the of sustainability education in the tertiary sector articulate this role by way of a case study. Ecosophical praxis of artist Keith Armstrong and and looks at developments in the integration of Specifically, I consider the philosophical his involvement in the creation of a sustainability into tertiary curriculum across development of the notion of “ecology,” which collaborative series of public events, Over disciplines and diverse learning contexts. Tania took place in the late 18th and early 19th Many Horizons (O|M|H). As a new media teaches in the DAB School of Design, the FASS centuries (well before Haeckel coined the term), artist, Keith Armstrong’s participative practices School of Communication and in the new and argue that by looking at its historical seek to provoke audiences to comprehend, Bachelor of Creative Innovation and Intelligence emergence, we begin to realise that the idea imagine and envisage collective pathways program at the University of Technology both was radical for its time and remains towards sustainable futures. In a current Sydney. radical in our own. I argue that we have not exhibition at University of Technology Sydney, yet––or at least not fully––grasped the Armstrong has developed an interactive, meaning and significance of the notion of a experiential 'whole of gallery' exhibition, and in diverse community of species, as it was first its realisation he has worked alongside a articulated by philosophers at the turn of the number of scientists, cultural theorists and 19th century. designers to investigate the mesh of environmental, social and cultural ecologies that ------Susanne Pratt, University of NSW web: www.susannepratt.com SESSION 8 PANEL | COMPOSTING – ‘Composing and Composting Elemental twitter: @susprat Feminisms & Environmental Humanities Toxicity, Affections’ Sense, Embodiment 3.30 – 5.00 During periods when the body turns to stored ------Lindsay Kelley, University of NSW fat for energy, rather than food, archived SESSION 9 PANEL | Kangaloon Creative ‘Sense, Embodiment—Anti-Cancer Survival Kit: toxins, such as mercury, can resurface, and re- Ecologies Toxic embodiment and “posthumanarchy”’ choreograph hormones and health. What Lorraine Shannon, Writer elemental kinships are formed when heavy ‘Global Post-wild Gardens and Local Bushland’ This paper investigates Beatriz da Costa’s Anti- metals accumulate in fleshy archives and then Cancer Survival Kit (2015), as an anticonsilient leach back into circulation? This paper takes the Many of Australia’s famous private gardens engagement with Elizabeth Wilson’s articulation author’s own experience of testing for, and have been established in the Blue Mountains in of the gut as “an organ of mind” (Wilson 2015). confirming, high levels of mercury in her blood NSW within what is now a world heritage area. Digestion and composting work together to and hair, as a starting point for discussing There have always been concerns about the encourage a feminist politics not only tolerant of elemental relations and toxicity. Drawing on impact of the exotic species that predominate in bile but actively nurturing and cultivating bile as Mel Y Chen’s (2012) notion of “queer loves” these gardens on surrounding bushland. a symbiont relationship and as antiauthoritarian induced by toxic conditions, the paper performs Bushcare groups argue that exotic weeds infest resistance to pharmacology (Gilbert, Sapp, a “diffractive” reading and writing of metallic national parks and northern hemisphere plants Tauber 2012, Haraway 2009). Following elements archived in bodies (Barad 2007; displace wildlife. Gardeners say they want to Derrida’s reading of the word pharmakon, Haraway 1997; van der Tuin 2011). Lab test preserve the attractive interface between the Wilson asks how to hold the poisonous and the results, geologic strata, scales, online forums bush, the wilderness and a person’s backyard; healing in material and political tension—in and field notes are read, not for finding fixed that tourists and visitors come not only to enjoy other words, how to compost. Animated by kale, or linear causalities, but for writing “more the scenery but to look at the spring blossom toxicity and frustration, in da Costa’s words, promising interference patterns” (van der Tuin and autumn colours. “more than even I can take,” the multispecies 2007). In learning to compose and compost the power structures playing out in da Costa’s last organic and inorganic, with care, and across In literary terms authors such as Drusilla works are both undone and bound by cellular, different temporalities and scales, normative Modjeska and Kate Llewellyn use gardens in culinary, and anticonsilient anarchisms. understandings of bodies are questioned and the Blue Mountains as a metaphor for the contrasted with rehabilitating molecular coexistence of wilderness and the civilized Working in the kitchen, Lindsay Kelley’s art affections. world. They forge a hybrid aesthetic in which practice and scholarship explore how the the boundaries of the global and local, nature experience of eating changes when Susanne Pratt's art, research and teaching is and culture, bush and city come together. technologies are being eaten. Her first book is situated at the intersection of aesthetics, However, the design and planting of gardens in Bioart Kitchen: Art, Feminism and Technoscience environmental health and technoscience. Her and the USA has over recent decades (London: IB Tauris, 2016). Kelley is an recent work has appeared in been strongly influenced by ecology. European International Research Fellow at the Centre for Antennae and Helvete—it explores toxic garden designers such as Piet Oudolf and Fine Art Research, Birmingham City University as embodiment through interdisciplinary feminist Gilles Clement design with a palate of resilient well as Co-Investigator with the KIAS funded and environmental justice lenses. She teaches in European plants that they believe are suitable Research-Creation and Social Justice Environmental Humanities and is lead educator for gardening in a ‘post-wild’ world – a hybrid CoLABoratory: Arts and the Anthropocene on the online course Environmental Humanities: world of wild nature and human management (University of Alberta, Canada). Remaking Nature via FutureLearn. as outlined by Emma Marris in her book The

Rambunctious Garden. This paper looks at the this process but also reveals tellingly the book on the Veneration of the Tree, and have first wild gardens to be established in the temporal and spatial dimensions of the founded the Tree Veneration Society in Blue Mountains and how they might transform settlement ethos. Australia. both the landscape and literary representations I propose to speak about the veneration of the of gardens. James Hatley is a professor in Environmental Tree as an environmental phenomenon and Studies at Salisbury University in Maryland. His reveal some of the myths and stories behind this Lorraine Shannon is a writer and editor. She most recent publication "Telling Stories in the practice. has a PhD in postcolonial literature from Trinity Company of Buffalo: Wisdom, Fluency and College, Dublin and a PhD in writing and Rough Knowledge" can be found in the Louise Fowler-Smith is an artist and Senior ecology from UTS. She has published in a range journal Environmental Philosophy. He has Lecturer at UNSW Art & Design and Director of of journals such as The Australian Humanities served as an executive officer for the the Imaging the Land International Research Review, PAN, Island, TEXT and Societies. She International Association for Environmental Initiative (ILIRI), which aims to promote new edited a collection of writings by Val Plumwood Philosophy and is a member of the Extinction ways of perceiving the land in the 21st century. entitled The Eye of the Crocodile and is writing a Studies Working Group, as well as of the Louise has researched the Veneration of the book on gardening philosophy while Kangaloon Group for Creative Ecologies. Tree as an environmental phenomenon since establishing an eco-arts garden in the Blue 2003. She has conducted Field Research across Mountains. Louise Fowler-Smith, University of NSW 10 States in India, leading to a book. Her ‘Ecological Imaginaries – local, urban, and gallery-based work has been conducted in James Hatley, Salisbury University global’ Australia, Italy, Japan and France. ‘Silos of Disaster: Dwelling Oneirically in a Weaponized Landscape’. At a time when deforestation is still occurring at ------an alarming rate it is possible to find pockets of SESSION 10 | The Anthropocene on the Screen Philosophic appeal is made for the practice of land where an alternative perception has oneiric dwelling, a mode of abiding on the face offered protection to trees and forests. Often Simon Troon Monash University of the earth in which one’s thought would find its referred to as Sacred Trees or Tree Groves ‘Hyperdisaster Movies: The Role of Nature in other side(s) in the land itself. At the First these can vary from one square metre to about Recent Hollywood Blockbusters’ People’s Buffalo Jump State Park near Great a two million square metres, providing a Falls, Montana one undergoes an invitation to network of protected areas where the inherent In the Hollywood disaster movies that cycled oneiric dwelling as a mode of ethical response diversity of flora and fauna have been into popularity during the 1970s and 1990s to and recuperative healing of the disastrous preserved. human protagonists frequently encounter forces effects of settlement culture upon land. This As an environmental artist, I have been of nature that they endure or overcome. includes but is not limited to the twinned researching how perception can influence Disasters featuring in more recent Hollywood dystopic legacies of ecocide and genocide as cognition of the land, with a recent focus on the films, however, mark critically significant they emerge in the extirpation of Bison bison, as veneration of trees. This investigation and changes in the complexities with which named by Linnaeus, across the High Plains. resultant work has spanned Australia, India, relationships between humanity and nature are Paranoiesis, a mode of knowing appropriate to Japan, Italy and more recently, France, where I represented cinematically. This paper takes the dwelling in the company of other living kinds, is was invited by L’Association ARBRE to creatively form of a close reading of disaster sequences particularly called for in the renewed effort to record the Remarkable Trees of Paris. In India I from recent franchise blockbusters The Avengers: dwell oneirically. The introduction in the have been photographing how trees are Age of Ultron (2015) and Independence Day 2: twentieth century of nuclear weapons of mass decorated as an act of veneration or worship Resurgence (2016). It examines how these destruction into these environs, transforming and have been interviewing people in the field sequences cinematically intermesh ecological land into weaponized landscape, complicates for the past 10 years. I am now completing a systems with geopolitical, technological, and military networks via analysis informed by In this paper we present our pedagogical work Keary Shandler is an experienced Sustainable recent critical understandings of film style and in progress, currently taking place in the School Business Leader, Lecturer (Murdoch University threads of thought concerning the Anthropocene. of Management and Governance at Murdoch Dubai), Marketer and Researcher. It argues that the ways in which these disaster University, in a “Business, Society and the Both authors are fascinated by the role of sequences stage encounters between humans, Environment” course delivered in three business in the Anthropocene. nature, technology, and alien others make these continents, in the cities of Perth (Australia), films key intimaters of emergent formulations of Singapore and Dubai (in a course that is part of Belinda Smaill Monash University the global ecologies that humans move through an MBA program!). Our work draws on the ‘Rethinking Documentary: Agency, Digital and significant contributors to global ecological assumption that deep learning (Alcaraz et al, technology and Ecological Interconnectedness’ imaginaries. In doing so it adds to a rapidly 2011; Bain, 2004) requires transforming growing body of ecocritical work theorising film knowledge, skills and emotions, and that This paper is concerned with animals, style in relation to ideas of the Anthropocene. experiential learning approaches are a must representation and questions of agency in the for this endeavour. Our teaching and learning digital era. Its methods align with the Simon Troon is a PhD candidate in the Film, strategies rely on documentary-filming and posthumanites, an endeavour that, for Cary Media and Communications program at Monash theatre in combination with action-learning. Our Wolfe, signals the possibility of rethinking the University and has previously completed an MA group-work based approaches first encourage humanities in relation “to the human’s entangled, in Theatre and Film Studies at the University of learners (now converted into amateur film- complex relations with animals, the environment, Canterbury in New Zealand. His research makers and actors) to “touch on the ground” and technology.” I begin by posing Grizzly Man explores cinematic representation of disaster manifestations of the Anthropocene and global as a film that sits at the cusp of a new epoch in and is concerned with issues of realism, trauma, environmental change -e.g. chemical pollution, documentary that is influenced by changing ecology and ethics. impacts of agriculture fertilizers, landscape manifestations of agency, digital technology transformation, etc. It and ecological interconnectedness. This epoch Jose M Alcaraz and Keary Shandler Murdoch then helps them to understand key impacts (e.g. sits against the background of both a “green University from industry) and key systems interactions. This wave” of film and television and Deborah Bird ‘Touching the Anthropocene: Experiential will be the primary source for the production of Rose’s notion of ecological existentialism. I Learning, Documentary-Filming and Theatre’ compelling film and drama pieces by the expand on this new era, considering in learners, plus for identifying real-world actions particular the case of online examples from Climate change, ozone depletion, ocean to be en-acted as an output of their learning nature cams (Crittercam and WildCam) to acidification, fresh water use, land use, chemical projects. YouTube clips (Marmot Licks GoPro, Elephant pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, loss of Takes Selfie & Films His Family and Last biodiversity… Global environmental change Our approach should be of use for any Tasmanian Tiger, Thylacine). These examples issues such as these may often seem distant or discipline (Humanities, Arts, Business or other disturb traditions of anthropocentrism in moving “too abstract”. Establishing the connections Social Sciences) and aims to help learners to image culture and contribute to a rethinking of between our local, immediate surroundings (our engage "head, hands and heart" (Sipos, 2009). human and animal agency, principally through home, factory, office, etc) and regional or Here we will present our preliminary findings, the mechanics of observation and repetition. planetary key pedagogical moves, ethical implications This paper sits within a larger project that environmental issues is challenging - and and learning assessment strategies. explores how human entanglements with non- perhaps more so for those with non-specialized human animals are rethought and affirmed backgrounds in the natural or environmental Jose M Alcaraz is a Senior Lecturer and MBA though the codes, conventions and traditions of sciences. co-Chair at the School of Business and the documentary moving image. Governance in Murdoch University.

Belinda Smaill is an Associate Professor in Film outcomes of an Australian Anthropocene and Screen Studies at Monash University. She is workshop, or ‘slam’, to be held in 2017 and Kirsten Wehner, University of the Arts London the author of The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, focused on identifying and discussing a range ‘Re-making Australia: Engaging publics in Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and co- of objects that record and ‘materialise’ the building Anthropocene Futures’. author of Transnational Australian Cinema: diverse dimensions of contemporary global Ethics in the Asian Diasporas (Lexington Books, change. The Australian Anthropocene slam will Many museum practitioners around the world 2013). Her new book, Regarding Life: Animals generate a hypothetical ‘cabinet of curiosities’, are now responding to the idea of the and the Documentary Moving Image was a selection of diverse objects, each able to Anthropocene, often apprehending it as a published in 2016 with SUNY Press. express potent and creative stories about this framework through which to invite publics to epoch. This cabinet will form the kernel of the grapple with the cultural-environmental ------project’s physical exhibition, to be developed challenges of our time. These efforts centered SESSION 11 PANEL |Anthropocene Futures: through a collaboration of our team and the initially on questions about how to dramatise the Australia & the Pacific National Museum of Australia (NMA), to open in Anthropocene–how to bring its complex, 2018, and an associated digital feature, to be distributed qualities and trajectories into view. Iain McCalman, University of Sydney hosted by the NMA. A book, Symbols of a Increasingly, however, museum practitioners are ‘Australia in the Anthropocene—A Project in Nation in the Age of Humans, will be produced also becoming interested in enabling audiences Progress’ to accompany the NMA exhibition, and will to acknowledge and reflect upon the cultural incorporate a series of short reflective essays on and emotional qualities of life in the ‘Understanding Australia in The Age of Humans: cabinet objects, bringing together multiple Anthropocene, and to discover stories that Localising the Anthropocene’ aims to undertake perspectives on their significance, together with inspire hope, action and the re-imagining of the first comprehensive research investigation of a catalogue of items on display. ways of living. Australia as a distinctive locality within the global idea of the new epoch of Humanity Over his long academic career Iain McCalman, Presenting early concepts for an ‘Australia in known as the Anthropocene. We aim to analyse currently Research Professor of History at the the Age of Humans’ exhibition, planned to open and narrate how human interventions have come University of Sydney, and Co-Director of the at the National Museum of Australia in 2019, to transform Australian environments in Sydney Environment Institute, has established a this paper explores how museums might invite fundamental and enduring ways, and to use national and international reputation as an and enable audiences to build ‘good’ both print and museum interpretive environments historian of science, culture and the environment Anthropocene futures. I suggest that museums to develop new understandings of the cultural whose work has influenced university scholars might contribute in four inter-related ways, dimensions of the Age of Humans. The project and students, government policy makers and through: cementing Anthropocenic narratives, will draw out the scholarly as well as the broad general publics around the world. In creating repositories of cultural creativity, practical and public dimensions of a history of addition to his considerable achievements as an providing spaces for cultural reflection, and the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, in the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate fostering collaborative knowledge-production peculiar socio-environmental context of the teacher he has published fourteen scholarly and social networks that enable collective Australian continent, showing the history, impact books with leading academic and trade action. and implications of human-influenced presses, and dozens of peer-reviewed articles biophysical planetary change within our and book chapters. In 2007 Iain was awarded Kirsten Wehner is a curator, anthropologist and distinctive and vulnerable continental and ocean the Officer of the Order of Australia for spatial storyteller whose work centres on environments. Services to History and the Humanities. He is a creating experiences that foster culturally and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the ecologically rich and resilient futures. From One of the major research dimensions of our Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 2004–2016, Kirsten was a senior curator at the proposed ARC project will develop the and the Australian Academy of the Humanities. National Museum of Australia, and for five years was Head Curator of the People and the climate change is altering coastal peoples’ relationship between the region’s original Environment program. She is currently based at relationships to their sea. The team has been owners and their unique environments. University of the Arts, London. Kirsten holds a interviewing in Guam, the Marshall Islands, PhD from New York University, is a past Fellow Tahiti and Samoa and will produce a Far from simply being remnants of the past, of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment documentary, publications and a travelling these sites have the potential to be focal points and Society, Munich, and is a member of the exhibition. The project has an emphasis on for both Indigenous and settler Australian Australia-Pacific Observatory of Humanities for material things and practices, and aims to share explorations of identity in relation to the Environment. Her most recent publication is findings with a broad range of communities, in contemporary landscapes. As meeting places, Curating the Future: Museums, communities and and out of the Pacific. Pacific ontologies, in points of discussion, as artistic inspiration, climate change (co-edited with Jenny Newell which ocean waters are unifying not isolating, engaging with Sydney’s rock art necessitates an and Libby Robin). and humans and nature are seen as co- alternate spatio-temporal experience of land to constitutive, are understandings of global utility the one dictated by GPS directions, tarmac, Jennifer Newell, Australian Museum if we are to combat the models that brought us traffic lights, and google maps. ‘“The sea is eating the land”: exploring Pacific the ongoing disaster of the Anthopocene. Islander relationships to a climate-changing Central to Indigenous Australians’ concept of ocean’ Jennifer Newell works in the Pacific Dreamings, this embodied spatio-temporal Film clip: Navigating a Changing Sea (6–7 environmental humanities. She has worked with understanding of the world challenges the minutes) Pacific communities and collections while at the western linear understanding of time and space British Museum, the National Museum of and the vastly different ideas of growth and A school teacher in Namdrik, a Marshallese Australia, the American Museum of Natural production associated with them. Thus atoll, moves his hands, biting them towards each History and now the Australian Museum. She meaningful cross-cultural engagement with other as he talks about the sea and lagoon focuses on the cultural dimensions of ecological Sydney’s rock art can arguably play an waters eroding his narrow atoll home. With the change in the Pacific, and how museums can important role in establishing sustainable future increasing overwashing, heat, drought, and the better engage hearts and minds in the issues of habitation of these landscapes. faltering fish stocks, he wonders about the climate change. future. Marshall Islands scholar Kristina Stege Vincent Bicego is a PhD candidate in the speaks of Islanders having a ‘highly layered ------Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at The interrelationship between self and sea …The SESSION 12 | Indigenous Knowledges and the University of Wollongong, where he also ocean is ever present, so that one's sense of self Governance of Climate Change teaches Art history and Theory. His research is always touched by the ocean in some way.’ focuses on the work of contemporary Aboriginal Vincent Bicego The University of Wollongong artists in relation to the cultural landscapes of What happens when an element of life that is ‘reDreaming the Anthropocene: Spatio-temporal southern Sydney. intimately related to self and ancestors explorations through Indigenous rock art’ becomes less nurturing, more Michael Davis, University of Sydney threatening? Anthropocene processes have This paper argues the importance of cross- ‘Making Environmental Knowledge in brought Pacific peoples deep challenges, cultural engagement with the extant rock art of Aboriginal/European Encounters: An Historical including an increasingly destructive and the greater Sydney region as a means of Perspective’ unpredictable ocean. reconceptualising our interaction with the environment in the Anthropocene. Secluded John MacGillivray, naturalist on the British The ‘Living with a Changing Pacific’ research amidst Sydney’s urban sprawl and peripheral scientific survey ship H.M.S. Rattlesnake, was project is bringing together two museums and bushlands, these pre-colonial carvings and dedicated to his task of collecting plants and the Sydney Environment Institute to explore how drawings are evidence of a symbiotic animals to add to the expanding imperial natural history collections. At one level of ethical guidelines and protocols for Indigenous Australia, the assumption being successive reading, the accounts of the Rattlesnake research. He has worked for many years with a problematization of climate change took place expedition by MacGillivray and others, present range of organisations, including academia and since the emergence of ‘bio-political a richly detailed record of the expedition’s government, with Aboriginal community governmentality’ with a consecutive array of collecting activities, and of encounters with local organisations, and as an independent various discourses, rationalities, techniques, Aboriginal people as the ships journeyed researcher. www.michaelbdavis.org practices adopted by government in governing through the islands, coasts and reefs of north climate change. Supplementing with aspects of east Australia from 1847 to 1850. At anchor in Nandita Das, University of Technology, Sydney Marxist political economy, the aim is to explore the north Queensland tropics, MacGillivray and ‘Bio-politics of Climate Change Governance in how nature from enacting limits to the economic others on the expedition established Australia’ process was converted into fundamental companionable relationships with individual element of market valorisation of capitalist Aboriginal people. In one sense, these Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world- mode of production. The dogma of carbon Aboriginal/explorer encounters can be historic facts and personages appear, so to pricing can be understood as a material- interpreted within the context of the global speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as discursive device through which climate change imperial science project, where species are tragedy, the second time as farce—Karl Marx, is considered as a market failure whose harvested as “specimens” to fill the British 1852, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis possible correction lies only with an insertion of herbaria and other collecting institutions. In this Bonaparte Global climate change has been the market-based policies. scenario, Aboriginal peoples’ environmental most contentious and divisive issue in Australian Nandita Das is currently pursuing a PhD knowledge is deemed useful to this imperial politics. While Australia is a land of heat and in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at scientific endeavour. In another interpretation, drought, at the same it has a dominant economic UTS. She is also associated with Institute for these explorer texts are scrutinised within an interest in the maintenance of fossil fuel Public Policy and Governance (IPPG) at UTS as environmental humanities and “multispecies” economy as it is still world’s largest producer of a policy and social research officer. Nandita framework, drawing on the work of key coal. Within this context, it is rather un-surprising has worked extensively at the grass-root level scholars including Debbie Rose and Val that climate change is defined as a ‘wicked’ or on issues of environment, slum development and Plumwood, and ideas about place and place- ‘diabolical’ problem (Garnaut, 2008). The poverty alleviation in the state of Uttaranchal making. In this reading, Aboriginal/explorer endemic failure of climate change policies and city of Kolkata in India. encounters are discussed as instances of local, under Labour and Liberal government across collaborative engagement, wherein Aboriginal generations point to the need for a serious and peoples’ deep environmental knowledge and critical reflection and interpretation upon the practices becomes enmeshed with British norms, rationale and processes though which colonial/explorer/scientific knowledges in new climate change is governed in Australia. The formations. Interrogating these complex significance of successive government’s embrace entanglements, this paper exposes tensions of neo-liberalism as a process through which the between the global and the local, and takes up grammar of climate change crisis was turned ------questions such as the nature of representations into an exclusively economic one. SESSION 13 PANEL | COMPOSTING – of Aboriginal agency in Indigenous and Feminisms & Environmental Humanities II: Water, environmental . Adopting a theoretical assemblage of Foucault’s Weather and Law Governmentality (1991; 2007; 2008) Michael Davis researches and writes about supplementing with Marxist conception of Astrida Neimanis, University of Sydney Indigenous/European histories and encounters, Accumulation (Marx, 1867, Capital-I) the main ‘Chemical Weapons in the Gotland Deep: A the relationships between Indigenous and other objective of this paper is to trace the Queer Archive of (Bad) Feelings’ knowledge systems, ecology and place, and genealogy of climate change governance in From the end of World War I but particularly in even earlier concepts of gathering and mondialisation” or the building of other worlds following World War II, major global powers dwelling. It is an account that suggests and (When Species Meet, 23). For Sedgwick, engaged in massive dumping of several deepens the ocean’s ancient and prevailing however, “shame is only facilitated by its hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical outsidedness from these institutions, and the anamorphic, protean susceptibility to new and warfare agents (CWA) such as mustard gas, attendant ethical/relational challenges. My expressive grammars”, and so “asking good tabun, and Lewisite in the planet’s oceans. One paper considers how the ocean body and its questions about shame … could get us particular site for this dumping was the Gotland dynamic systems can take us beneath ethics to somewhere” (Touching Feeling, 64). Shame Deep, off the east coast of Sweden in the Baltic myriad enactments and offerings of contains this precise disagreement: it can close Sea. While the occasional resurfacing of these relationality. I import Lorraine Code’s ecological the self off to otherness or allow changes in chemical agents (in fishers’ nets, on the snouts of thinking into the ocean domain, bringing it into order to open one out to the world differently. seals, on white sandy beaches camouflaged as my engagement with marine scientific texts as a My research aims to describe and critique of amber) is understandably distressing, the way to discern stories of ocean relationality. the relationship between wealthy cities, climate dominant (environmental, scientific) opinion has Two relational meditations ensue: Scattering change and extreme weather. The particular been to let these chemicals lie in situ; even if layer and vertical migration, which explores the aim of this paper is to ask good questions about removal were simple or cost-effective (which it dimensional relations of marine inhabitants shame with regard to the redevelopment of is not), any deliberate resurfacing would risk and their long-range, cyclical, nocturnal cities under the rubric of resilience to climate further contamination. In this paper I think about ascensions from the benthic floor and mid ocean change and extreme weather. Can we say that the kind of material archive created by this zones through fluid vertical layerings to, or the dominant discourses of resilience are uncanny threat. Queer theorist Ann near, the moon-lit ocean surface; and Whale ashamed? If so, ashamed of what? And, finally, Cvetkovich's concept of "archives of feeling" Falls and Detritus Rain, which considers the in what ways do resilience frameworks close off provides one way into thinking about these toxic material drifting down to the ocean floor and some possible worlds while opening onto others? futures-in-the-present. Here, the multiple the lively feedback of dead matter and things I will explore these questions by way of a close temporalities of nested militarisms become to the ocean. reading of the “100 Resilient Cities” Website sutured to storied ecologies still unfolding in the and the Arup “City Resilience Framework”. present. Susan Reid is an environmental protector, arts Jennifer Mae Hamilton is a researcher, teacher Astrida Neimanis is a Lecturer in the developer and lawyer. Her present research and gardener with a PhD in English Literature Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at interest is with oceanic imaginaries that sound from UNSW. She is a Postdoctoral Research the University of Sydney. She writes about out relations with the dynamic spatiality and Associate in the Department of Gender and water, weather, bodies and other environmental materiality of the sea and its inhabitants. Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney matters. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist funded by The Seed Box: A MISTRA+FORMAS Phenomenology is forthcoming in early 2017. Environmental Humanities Collaboratory. She She is also Associate Editor of the journal Jennifer Mae Hamilton, University of Sydney also lectures in ecocriticism at NYU Sydney. Her Environmental Humanities. ‘Weathering the City: Shame in/as Resilience?’ first book, This Contentious Storm: An Ecocritical and Performance History of King Lear, is Susan Reid, University of Sydney Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Donna Haraway forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic. ‘Drifting Borders with Current Bodies’ disagree on the usefulness of shame. For Haraway, shame disarms a more generous In Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1993) mode of critique. With regard to Derrida’s end Robert Pogue-Harrison recounts how the nakedness in front of his cat, for example, she etymologies of Western law and ecology share argues that his “shame trumped curiosity and a kinship, which has ancient roots in forests and that does not bode well for autre-