Undisciplining Art and Ecology

Essay Undisciplining Art and Ecology by Taru Elfving (CAA) is published in the anthology Worlding Ecologies. Art, Science & Activism towards Climate Justice, edited by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk and Eva Burgering.

Working together with the scientists and artists in Seili since 2017 has taught me to embrace the inevitability of indeterminacy as essential to working with ecological matters. The island has also fostered a shift away from dualist boundary-making and challenged preconceived ideas about where and when the work or event of art happens. In response to my queries about environmen- tal change, Seili has in turn asked who and what is allowed in the spaces and agencies of art. This essay is part of an ongoing longterm pursuit to articulate the irreplaceable role that Seili and its more-than-human community have played in the rupture and recon- figuration of understandings of ecological concerns and the fundamental challenges they pose to our practices in art and society at large. I aim to write not only from but with the island…

The book Worlding Ecologies. Art, Science & Activism towards Climate Justice is published by Valiz & RADIUS Centre for Contemporary Art & Ecology in 2024. The book was launched in a symposium Worlding Ecologies at RADIUS in Delft, the Netherlands in October 2024, where Elfving presented the ongoing work of CAA in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute in Seili.