“Earlwood Farm Presents…” is a series of events occurring throughout 2015 at Verge Gallery at Sydney Uni. The series links the environment and art with politics. Art is often imagined as a marketing tool for environmental science and used to communicate existing scientific data around climate change, biodiversity loss, rising sea levels and ocean acidification, to name a few of the challenges we face. But artists are actually best equipped to critique the world as it is and cultivate radical new visions for the world as we’d like it to be. The series of events will explore four different art forms–film, literature, dance and performance–and explore the ways they can help us think through the environmental crisis and reimagine the world.
ONE: Earlwood Farm Presents Fossil Fuelled Film – 18th April – 1-4pm (Screening), 4pm-5pm (Discussion)
An afternoon film screening and a discussion on fossil fuels, ideology and capitalism (with Dr Demelza Marlin and Dr Craig Johnson)
TWO: Earlwood Farm Presents Read before Burning – 15th August 11.00am-12.30pm
What have you read that has triggered a thought about climate change or some related issue, but might not be an obvious candidate for a Nature writing award? We will collect the stories shared at this event and bring them together in an online archive. If it goes well, we might do it again and make that archive bigger. Croissants and Coffee will be served.
THREE: Earlwood Farm Presents the Christmas Climate Change Variety Hour – 12th December, 7.30pm for Sunset Start
What happens to all our Christmassy fantasies when Santa’s workshop melts into the Arctic Ocean? In order to do anything about Climate Change, someone has to question current Christmas traditions and we think we need more than Christmas ornaments made locally out of recycled milk bottles to do so. But also maybe we still want good food and holidays?
FOUR: Earlwood Farm Presents Dance the Commons – TBA, 2016
Barbara Ehrenreich argues that “there has been a growing carnivalization of protest demonstrations … They put on masks or paint their faces; they bring drums … and sometimes dance through the streets.” This event will celebrate the links between dance and collective action in an afternoon of folk dancing and orange juice.