Past Events
“Holding back the tide”
Film screening + director Q&A・November 12, 7:00 pm @ Maine Film Center
Holding Back the Tide, an impressionistic hybrid documentary directed by Emily Packer, traces the unlikely history and dynamic life cycles of oysters in New York City, formerly considered the oyster capital of the world. In the twenty-first century, these mollusks have become little more than specters in the city whose foundations they once formed. The film follows the efforts of environmentalists to restore oysters to the harbor, but it is the oysters themselves who steal the show: Packer examines these strange, slippery, and sex-changing creatures through a queer lens, reflecting humanity’s evolving understanding of gender and self-actualization.
Co-sponsored by the Colby Center for the Arts & Humanities, Cinema Studies, & the Science, Technology, and Society Program
“Animal architectures &
Repair on Native Land”
Southworth Lecture ・November 7, 5:00 pm @ Given Auditorium
Certain animals, such as bees, beavers, and bowerbirds, are commonly referred to as “architects.” But do we mean that in only a tongue-in-cheek way? What would it mean to take seriously the idea of animals as architects and landscape designers? This talk by Rebecca Zorach (Northwestern University) draws on both Indigenous and European ideas of the creative powers of nature, and on contemporary practices in art and environmental repair, with a focus on the creative ecological role of t’ma’kwe / amik / qapit / castor canadensis (the North American beaver). How might these ideas and practices prompt us to revise our sense of what it means for humans to practice these arts and to practice them mindfully?
Co-sponsored by the Art Department & the Colby College Museum of Art