Image: San Jose Museum of Art
The San José Museum of Art and the City of San José Climate Art Program will present the second Art + Climate Symposium, ‘Reimagining Our Waterways,’ on October 16–17. The first day will take place at the San José Museum of Art, while the second will be held at Coyote Creek. The symposium is artist-led and multidisciplinary, with presenters discussing collaborations with scientists, park rangers, activists, curators, historians, and others in the development of their projects.
The second day will be offsite, engaging directly with the nearby waterway Coyote Creek. The ceremony will be led by Indigenous leaders Gerardo Ixteya Loera and Corina Herrera-Loera, who will open the day with an observance honoring the waters that connect all living beings.
Martha Atienza is among the participants identified as a visual artist. Sessions by Sunaura Taylor and Astrida Neimanis will address environmentalism for damaged ecosystems and the cultural imagination needed for environmental practice. Taylor will discuss her book ‘Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert’ and strategies for developing an environmentalism for impaired waters and injured ecosystems, while Neimanis will discuss hydrofeminism and an environmental practice rooted in new artistic and cultural imaginations.
The symposium is presented in conjunction with the exhibition ‘a small ocean swallowed,’ which features six artists whose work embodies states of ecological entwinement and poetically and experimentally reorients human relationships to water.
The organisers say the case studies demonstrate how crucial artistic tools and thinking are to reimagining and implementing alternatives to official systems.
