Human beings were able to develop a stable relationship with the land and abandon the hunter-gatherer lifestyle only when some communities decided to faithfully and stably tie their existence to a relatively small number of trees and shrubs that could provide them with food and shelter. This is how the first city was born: it was this strange act of spatial fidelity to plant life that gave rise to the urban environment. That means that the relationship between different species is not tangentially urban. It is the original urban fact. If this is true, then what we call the countryside is a form of urbanism in which, in addition to the number of people and stones, we also have to conceive how many plants should exist, which ones, how fast they should grow, and so on. Consequently, any form of opposition between city and countryside (or the wilderness") is illusory. The solution to climate change lies not in replacing cities with the countryside or “wilderness,” but in designing cities more radically: extending the culture of urban congestion to a culture of species congestion and biodiversity density. How can we rethink the technological urban model to build planetary interspecies density?
Emanuele Coccia is associate professor at the EHESS in Paris. He is the author of The Life of Plants (2018), Metamorphosis (2021) and Philosophy of the Home (2024). His books are translated into several languages. He collaborated with many artists. He recently published a photo-theory book with Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen (Modern Alchemy, 2022), a philosophical epistolary on light with photographer Paolo Roversi (Lettres sur la lumières, 2024), and a book on the relationship between fashion and philosophy with Gucci’s former creative director Alessandro Michele (The Life of forms. Philosophy or Re-enchantment, 2024).
He co-directed animation videos such as Quercus (2019, with Formafantasma) and Heaven in Matter (2021). He co-curated an exhibition on fashion (The Many Lives of a Garment ITS, Trieste) and a show on art and ecology (Dancing with All, 21 Century Museum Kanazawa, together with Yuko Hasegawa).
Robin Kelsey joined the Harvard faculty in 2001 and has been Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography since 2009. From 2016 to 2024, he served as Dean of Arts & Humanities, and prior to that he served as Chair of the Department of History of Art & Architecture.
The Environment Forum is dedicated to exploring new work in the arts and humanities that reframes or reimagines the relationship of humanity to the rest of nature. The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center is convened by Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography at Harvard University.
This event is co-sponsored by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.
LOCATION:Emerson Hall, Room 105 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20241120T223000Z DTEND:20241120T223000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR