The Berkeley/Stanford Graduate Student Symposium is an annual day-long conference devoted to issues and questions within the fields of art history, art practice, and design, hosted each year by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA). The 2018 symposium, A Line in the Sand: Art, Ecology, and Precarity, will address topics of environmental crisis, human efforts at environmental justice, and art's role in exploring alternative modes of engaging with "nature" or "the earth." The symposium seeks proposals emerging speakers in the arts from a variety of disciplines and professional backgrounds; please find our call for papers attached, and forward to any who might be interested in applying or attending.

The 2018 Berkeley/Stanford Symposium team

A Line in the Sand: Art, Ecology, and Precarity
Berkeley/Stanford Symposium at SFMOMA, San Francisco, California
April 7, 2018

Keynote Speaker:
Professor T.J. Demos, History of Art and Visual Culture
University of California Santa Cruz

Submissions due: January 5, 2018
Contact information: Claire Ittner, claire_ittnerberkeley.edu, and Yechen Zhao, yechenzstanford.edu

A Line in the Sand takes its title from the sense of precarity and urgency emerging from recent efforts to take unified global action on environmental issues. Epitomized by the mission to mitigate climate change outlined in the Paris Agreement, drawing a line in the sand marks a boundary, the recognition of a critical horizon that demands a collective response and solution. In the wake of the United States’ decision to withdraw from this seemingly global imperative, what are the limitations of political action in the name of the environment? Do these strategies reduce Earth to a receptive surface for human action, and narrowly legislate what counts as positive engagement with the environment? Are there ways of visualizing our relationship to the planet – other ecologies – that go beyond conservation, sustainability, and “living green” to address humanity’s inextricably deep political, social, and cultural entanglement with the environment? Across art, design, and visual culture, what new forms of action do such ecologies permit?

A Line in the Sand seeks contributions from emerging voices from within and outside of academic art history. We welcome proposals to present short talks, interviews, workshops, space-specific performance work, or gallery talks in dialogue with SFMOMA’s collection and exhibitions. Traditional academic conference presentations will be showcased alongside more experimental contributions. Applicants should be either current graduate students (in any field) or emerging young voices from the wider community of visual culture including artists, designers, writers, and museum professionals.

This symposium seeks to address specific examples across cultures and time periods, as well as engage with compelling issues spanning disciplinary boundaries and areas of specialization. Potential topics include but are not limited to: crisis, natural disaster, climate change, extinction and the Anthropocene, Earth art, design for survival, technology and “fixing,” durability, ephemerality, pollution, waste, hope or hopelessness, indigenous ecologies, resource use, extraction, materialism, consumerism, endangerment, eco-futurity, consensus, solidarity, limits and frontiers, risk, projection, authority, mitigation and mending, social sustainability, and “green” design.

For more information please visit www.berkeleystanfordsymposium.com.
Please submit:
A 300 word abstract including a description of format
A Participant CV (for collaborative work please include CVs for all participants)
A description of any necessary support and/or technical needs beyond a standard microphone

All materials can be submitted online at berkeleystanfordsymposium.com/submissions or via email by sending all materials to: submissionsberkeleystanfordsymposium.com. Materials must be submitted no later than January 5, 2018.