Reading Group Research Network Reading Group: Surviving on a Damaged Planet Demos and Bird Rose

“Today we confront an … urgent challenge – either a near future of climate catastrophe, or one of just transition, the former achieved by doing nothing, the latter realized through sustainable democracy and the creation of an alternative future. The choice is (still) ours to make.” – T. J. Demos

For this Research Network reading group, we will read a range of literature on global environmental issues and discuss positive approaches to the climate crisis.

Join us as we read Deborah Bird Rose’s, “Shimmer, When All You Love Is Being Trashed”. A chapter from the book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, this text explores inter-species cooperation and calls for renewed appreciation for the shimmer, or brilliance, of life.

In order to work towards positive climate action, we will read from T. J. Demos’, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology and discuss his suggestions for working towards a more positive climate future.

Please bring along your own ideas for how to positively approach the climate crisis.

This group is open to all; it is a supportive and peer-led space for thinking and learning together. It is a space for constructive disagreements and critical engagement that is always based on mutual respect, interest and care.

All texts are read together in the group, you don’t need to read them in advance. Please contact the library if you have any questions or wish to pick up a copy of the texts in advance: library@iniva.org

Biographies

T.J. Demos is a Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Founder and Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. He writes widely on the intersection of contemporary art, global politics, and ecology.

Deborah Bird Rose was an Adjunct Professor in Environmental Humanities at the University of New South Wales, Australia.  Since the 1980s, her researched focused on entwined social and ecological justice, based on long-term fieldwork with Aboriginal people in Australia.