Draft Calendar Description:
In this course, students explore ecologically-engaged ontological perspectives and frameworks through the process of creating and considering land-based art. Engaging in embodied creative research practices, students develop an understanding of the complex nature of human relationships to the land. Gentle interrogations of the socioeconomic and cultural process resulting in the Anthropocene will lead to contemplations of alternative ways of knowing and being, with an emphasis on those of the Tk'emlu ps te Secwe pemc. Through embodied research, art making, interacting with the land, and self-reflexive journaling, students experiment, play, and engage with alternative ways to articulate meaning and communicate ideas directed towards envisioning a more socially-just and sustainable future.
Draft Course Learning Outcomes:
- Articulate the ontological perspectives of several ecologically-engaged worldviews as well as their development and historical situatedness.
- Critically describe historical and contemporary approaches to land-based art.
- Express respectful and informed awareness of place-based Indigenous ways of knowing and how they differ from those of the dominating worldview.
- Communicate complicated ontological perspectives through creative research land-based art practices.
- Demonstrate a commitment to critical reflexivity, self-development and personal growth through written and oral expressions.
- Teacher: Twyla Exner
- Teacher: Robin Westland