Ensnared in but fed up with the inanity of late capitalism and environmental ruin, this thesis examines the ways in which contemporary artists are working against the grain of the dominant anthropocentric Western culture to seek new pathways out of the so-called Anthropocene. The artists under discussion, Carolina Caycedo, Krista Caballero and Frank Ekeberg, and Natalie Jeremijenko, create participatory projects that simultaneously critique the entanglement of human practices and loss of species and encourage their audiences (and the larger global public) to formulate new relationships with our fellow Earthly critters and our damaged ecosystems. This research takes a leaf from new materialist methodologies and the work of scholars such as Donna Haraway and T. J. Demos to consider how artists have deviated from the accustomed Western humanist notion of the individual as separate from nature to instead become recognizant of our critical role as one animal among many imbricated in a remarkably complex but endangered system of exchange. With its implications of collectivity and becoming-with each other, audience participatory art lends itself well to this thinking. The three case studies therefore work through the advantages and potential limitations of art serving as a medium for small-scale social change at a moment when larger global movements toward ecological sustainability are absent. The discussed participatory projects make apparent that there does exist an elasticity to human thought that can open potential futures in which the human species is less toxic and more responsive to the multifarious animacies that mill about this imperiled planet. / Art History

Within this supporting paper, the artist discusses Generative Response, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition. This paper is a narrative of the artist's development, philosophies, and methodologies. Further, it illustrates how her work and development have been affected by studies in humanity, social activism, human responsibility, and environmental consciousness. Generative Response communicated the artist's ideology of process as metaphor for living life, involving the viewer in an "unfinished dialogue" wherein works of art undergo processes translating their role as part of a generative cycle. Generative Response was composed of seven sculptural components called "stations" depicting the processes of growth, habitation, consumption, erosion, and filtration. Each station operated as a micro-ecology that embodied these processes by using water literally and/or metaphorically as an agent of change. Materials included water from a local creek, found objects, glass, ceramics, copper, live organisms, and unique clay water filters.

Plasticozoic excavates humanity’s relationship to nature and to ourselves through plastic artifacts of consumer culture, which were recovered from oceans and beaches by the artist, or sent to her from around the world. Through created specimens and collected fragments of the Anthropocene, it considers the precariousness of our place in time, where misperceptions of reality and the collective impact of our every day lives can have global effects. "Future geologists will be able to precisely mark our era as the Plasticozoic, the place in the sands of time in which bits of plastic first appeared." -Oceanographer A. Sylvia Earle, The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One

Garbage landfills are at the heart of debates over sustainable urban development. Landfills are the cheapest waste-disposal method, but have specific environmental problems and are a common target for citizen activism such as environmental justice and Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) protests. As a means of covering up the scars at recently closed landfills, it has been common for cities to redevelop landfills into parks. The ongoing redevelopment projects at New York City's Fresh Kills, Greater Toronto's Keele Valley, and Greater Tel Aviv's Hiriya landfills are uniquely ambitious and large-scale projects, because these three landfills were among the largest in the world at the time each of them closed around the turn of the twenty-first century. These three landfill-park redevelopments are positive projects, but there are more complexities involved than one would find discussed in booster rhetoric such as government press releases, local newspaper descriptions, and even museum exhibitions. The construction of Freshkills Park, North Maple Regional Park, and Ariel Sharon Park does little to address the ongoing waste-disposal policy concerns of New York, Toronto, and Tel Aviv; therefore, the redevelopments have more significance as “symbols” of a poor past policy being replaced by a “progressive” policy for a better future than as actual waste-disposal policies. Artists and landscape architects have created works based on the theme of parkland as a fresh start for these landfills, in gallery and museum exhibitions such as Hiriya in the Museum at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2000 and artwork created by acclaimed environmental artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles for Fresh Kills.

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition, entitled Family, Work, Land. The exhibit was mounted in Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN, from February 22nd to March 11th, 2022. A public reception was held on the evening of March 4th . The exhibition consisted principally of four multimedia installations. Smith’s body of work is an interpretation of how stories that he often heard growing up are related to the Western North Carolina community in which his grandparents were living in the first quarter of the twentieth century. These works explore the interactions between people, how they support themselves, and the impact that working for the logging industry had on the family and the land around them.

This thesis investigates the connections between Sara Ekholm Eriksson´s artwork and the concept of nature in the Anthropocene. Three examples of installations are analyzed and put in a context of the Anthropocene, about the political, moral, and aesthetic value in art. The artwork has qualities that can be described as eco-art. Communicative aspects of raising awareness to nature and its processes can easily, and in this case rightfully, be read as statements to preserve biological diversity. Both the formal properties and the intellectual references can be described as a part of forming the cultural judgement. Connecting Ekholm Eriksson´s artistic work to theories about the cognitive properties of art shows that her works offers the emotional experience of climate change. An effective way to learn about climatic changes are by experience which is what makes the artistic works pedagogical and cognitive aspects so valuable. Even if her intention mainly was to make open artworks that invites the viewer to discover details in a new way, Ekholm Eriksson also works with time layers and processes in nature.

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Working with an organization outside the public school system that was creating schoolyard gardens, I began to think about culture and cultivation inside and outside of schooling practices. The liveliness of the schoolyard gardens presented possibilities for enlivening educational discourses. With two participants I planted a container box schoolyard garden outside Lamoureux Hall, which houses the Faculty of Education. Utilizing aspects of place-based pedagogy, ecoliteracy, ecopedagogy and a metissage of a/r/tography, eco-art and writing as a method of inquiry, we tended the garden and dwelled upon ideas of nature, culture, and their intersection in a particular place. Our garden experiences left cyber footprints in virtual space as blog spots on a thesis blog site. The garden and the inquiry it generated outside,is brought back inside the education building as a Master's thesis. The garden grew in different and unpredictable ways due to intense construction on site, entwining the planter boxes with unseen variables.

Working with an organization outside the public school system that was creating schoolyard gardens, I began to think about culture and cultivation inside and outside of schooling practices. The liveliness of the schoolyard gardens presented possibilities for enlivening educational discourses. With two participants I planted a container box schoolyard garden outside Lamoureux Hall, which houses the Faculty of Education. Utilizing aspects of place-based pedagogy, ecoliteracy, ecopedagogy and a metissage of a/r/tography, eco-art and writing as a method of inquiry, we tended the garden and dwelled upon ideas of nature, culture, and their intersection in a particular place. Our garden experiences left cyber footprints in virtual space as blog spots on a thesis blog site. The garden and the inquiry it generated outside,is brought back inside the education building as a Master's thesis. The garden grew in different and unpredictable ways due to intense construction on site, entwining the planter boxes with unseen variables.

Working with an organization outside the public school system that was creating schoolyard gardens, I began to think about culture and cultivation inside and outside of schooling practices. The liveliness of the schoolyard gardens presented possibilities for enlivening educational discourses. With two participants I planted a container box schoolyard garden outside Lamoureux Hall, which houses the Faculty of Education. Utilizing aspects of place-based pedagogy, ecoliteracy, ecopedagogy and a metissage of a/r/tography, eco-art and writing as a method of inquiry, we tended the garden and dwelled upon ideas of nature, culture, and their intersection in a particular place. Our garden experiences left cyber footprints in virtual space as blog spots on a thesis blog site. The garden and the inquiry it generated outside,is brought back inside the education building as a Master's thesis. The garden grew in different and unpredictable ways due to intense construction on site, entwining the planter boxes with unseen variables.