Critical Environments: Visual Cultures Public Programme Spring Term 2015

'Critical Environments' names several senses. If the (Greek) 'krinein' is to sift and 'kritikos' is the ability to discern, then we are faced with the work of interpretation. Yet, if we turn to the Latin 'criticare', then those environments are diagnosed as gravely ill. We know that what we call the 'environment' is indeed in a state of crisis -- acidification renders the oceans increasingly inhospitable to life; deforestation threatens both local ecologies and global climate maintenance; the appetite for meat eats up land as well as nonhuman life. Many of us choose not to know this, or perhaps maintain the fetishistic logic of knowing that comes with simultaneous disavowal. Corporate interests ranging across agriculture, pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, and the super-saturation of all forms of media hamper the work of interpretation and the possibility of agency and intervention.