AC Discussion | Ethics + Sustainability
On Friday, January 24th, we sat down with panelists Corson Androski, Karin Campbell, and Taylor Keen to talk about how a changing climate invigorates creative practitioners’ reevaluation of social responsibility, sustainability, and limits to growth. Our panelists looked at some structural barriers that prevent us from analyzing the climate problem’s ethical implications more thoughtfully and discussed examples of how those barriers are being confronted within cultural institutions, individual creative practices, and communities of indigenous peoples on the frontline of climate change.
The panelists’ discussion continued to elaborate indigenous ways of knowing and caring for our shared ecosystems that are often overlooked or left out of public discourses on climate change. An ethical framework, rooted in indigenous ecological knowledge, emerged as a guide to help shape our individual actions, confront corporate greenwashing, and re-examine heroic climate solutions that favor large-scale technological interventions over cultivating a deeper awareness of the planet’s natural systems. The discussion wrapped up with a healthy dose of humility and weighed the consequences of acting big and acting quickly against the benefits of slowing down, assessing our footprint, and understanding the environmental and political ecologies of which we’re only a small part.
Watch the full discussion below and share your thoughts in the comments section.
About the panelists:
Corson Androski: Corson Androski is a researcher, conservationist, software developer, and photographer/filmmaker from Hutchinson, Kansas. Their work uses the concept of care (as labor, affect, and ethic, given/received by humans and other-than-humans, individuals, and systems) to consider emergent communities of illness alongside informal conservation of the small, overlooked ecosystems of weeds and fungi that spring up in the seams of our patchwork flyover state. Corson was awarded one of Amplify’s Artist Support Grant recipients in 2019 and is an Alternate Currents Working Group Member in 2020.
Karin Campbell: Karin Campbell is the Phil Willson Curator of Contemporary Art at Joslyn Art Museum. She completed her BA in art history and political science at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA in 2006 and her MA in curatorial studies at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in 2011. Since joining Joslyn in 2012, Campbell has curated several major temporary exhibitions, including Word/Play: Prints, Photographs, and Paintings by Ed Ruscha and the traveling survey Sheila Hicks: Material Voices. In addition to overseeing the Museum’s collection of postwar and contemporary art, Campbell is the principal curator for Joslyn’s Karen and Doug Riley Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, the first space in the museum’s history dedicated specifically to living artists.
Taylor Keen: Taylor Keen is a full time instructor in the Heider College of Business Administration in Strategy and Entrepreneurship. Keen is also the Founder of Sacred Seed, a not-for-profit entity whose mission is to propagate tribal seed sovereignty, battle for tribal sacred geography and the seek cultural revitalization among tribal peoples. Currently, Keen is embarking on a journey with indigenous seeds of the upper Missouri River tribes to grow, harvest and celebrate the cosmology of the 4 Sisters (corn, bean, squash, and sunflower). Additionally, from his book-in-progress, he incorporates teachings of the sacred masculine / feminine of tribal peoples including the cosmology of Mother Corn and the Earth Mother goddess. Keen holds a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College as well as a Master's of Business Administration and Masters of Public Administration from Harvard University, where he served as a Fellow in the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Taylor is the author of the book-in-progress entitled "Rediscovering America: Sacred Geography, the Ancient Earthen Works and an Indigenous History of Turtle Island”. Keen is Trustee Emeritus of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Board member Emeritus of the Humanities Nebraska, and Chairman Emeritus of the Blackbird Bend Corporation (The Omaha Nation of Nebraska and Iowa’s Economic Development Corporation).