ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS MERGING TOGETHER IN ONE EVENING

The University of Alberta is hosting a Leonardo Art, Science, Evening Rendezvous (LASER) event. For more information about this event and LASERAlberta, click here.

This event will feature three globally renowned artists, designers, and scientists to cross-pollinate their research and creativity by presenting their own work. The theme of this LASERAlberta is art, climate, energy and activism. The panel will speak 6 PM to 7.30PM on April 3rd in the Telus International Centre, room 150.

Art :: Climate :: Energy :: Activism

This LASERAlberta panel brings together the three lead researchers of Just Powers, a research initiative addressing the impact and importance of decolonial feminist theory, and practice for thinking through alternatives to petrocapitalism. In addition to giving an overview of the Just Powers project, Co-Investigators Loveless, Mookerjea, and Principal Investigator Wilson, will discuss Speculative Energy Futures, a sub-project of Just Powers that brings together a carefully chosen group of artistic and humanities researchers with science, social science and policy experts to investigate the challenges of energy transition.

Together participants will produce a research-based art exhibition as well as a series of publications, bringing attention to the importance of arts and humanities perspectives on the social and cultural impacts of energy transition informed by the latest research emerging from the IPCC and Future Energy Systems. Just as our current society – this petroculture that we live in – has been shaped by oil, so too will our futures be shaped around new energy systems and the networks of power that develop around them. Organized around the central idea of the Just Powers research network, this panel proposes energy transition as one of the most pressing intersectional feminist issues of our time.

Dr. Natalie S. Loveless is a conceptual artist, curator, and assistant professor of contemporary art history and theory in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, where she also directs the Research-Creation and Social Justice CoLABoratory. She is co-lead of Speculative Energy Futures, a multi-year project that is part of the Just Powers initiative led by Dr. Sheena Wilson and funded by the Future Energy Systems CFREF, the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) and a SSHRC Insight grant. Her book, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, is forthcoming with Duke University Press.

Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea is director of the Intermedia Research Studio in the Department of Sociology (University of Alberta), where he specializes in decolonizing social theory, critical globalization studies, and intermedia research. His current projects include SSHRC funded research on The Commons and the Convergence of Crises, Toxic Media Ecologies: Critical Responses to the Cultural Politics of Planetary Crises and is co-director of Feminist Energy Futures and iDoc@Just Powers. He is a founding member of RePublicU, a critical university studies project, and of the Arts and the Research-Creation and Social Justice CoLABoratory.

Dr. Sheena Wilson is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, co-director of the international Petrocultures Research Group, and research-lead on Just Powers, an interdisciplinary and community-engaged initiative focused on climate justice organized around socially just energy transition for all. Funded by a Tri-Council SSHRC grant and the Future Energy Systems’ Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), the research initiatives ongoing under Just Powers include, amongst others, Feminist Energy Futures: Power Shift and Environmental Social Justice; 2) Speculative Energy Futures 3) iDoc and 4) Bigstone Cree: A Vision for the Future. Dr. Wilson’s monograph in process is titled Deep Energy Literacy: Toward Just Futures.

LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is Leonardo’s international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi and are in over 25 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website. (leonardo.info/lasert-talks)

The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.

About Leonardo/ISAST
Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) is a nonprofit organization that serves the global network of distinguished scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers through our programs focused on interdisciplinary work, creative output and innovation. From its beginnings, Leonardo/ISAST has served as THE virtual community for purposes of networking, resource-sharing, best practices, research and events in Art/Science/Technology.

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