Visual Eco-Criticism: Artist Talk with Katie Kurtz

$10 General Admission, FREE Admission for Headlands Members

What does the green movement mean for art and vice versa? Bay Area writer and environmentalist Katie Kurtz considers this question via a practice she has coined “visual eco-criticism.” The term visual eco-criticism is a lens through which to analyze environmentally-related art and to consider visual art and visual culture from an “eco-critical” perspective. For several years, Kurtz has been engaged with questions of how visual culture impacts the environmental movement and the affects of the green movement on visual art. During a short Program Residency at Headlands this summer, Kurtz will develop the concept of visual eco-criticism through an essay starting a formal conversation around these ideas. Kurtz considers the work of photographer Barry Underwood (AIR ’09), German installation artist Christel Dillbohner, and multidisciplinary, San Francisco-based artist Christine Lee as case studies to directly test her thesis.

This public program is presented in partnership with the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. Christel Dillbohner’s Ice Floe, a site-specific, sculptural installation that is at once a meditative environment as well as a catalyst for dialogue around the urgency of climate change in the Arctic, will be on view at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art from August 8–September 30, 2009.

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