LASER Talks at Tempe: Seizing the Moment

The event will be chaired by Bri Noonan & facilitated by Scott Cloutier

Event Info

When: 22/8/22 at 5 p.m. Arizona Time, Find your timezone HERE

Where: Online event, ZOOM link will be provided upon registration

Join our upcoming LASER Tempe webinar on Monday, August 22, where we will explore the Seize the Moment Initiative Seed Grant Faculty research projects we have been supporting over the past year. We will hear from two faculty research teams about what makes their projects highlight the moment we need to be currently seizing. 

Through transdisciplinary collaborations in the arts, sciences, humanities, and technology in pedagogy, research, and public engagement, Anthropocene and Turn it Around have been implementing their projects to create sustainable impact outcomes working with communities from a local to global context. 

Seize the Moments Faculty Research Seed Grants provide ASU faculty with the opportunity to apply for up to $10,000 to support collaborative, transdisciplinary research projects and activities that address the intersecting social, environmental, and health crises of the syndemic.

PROJECTS

Anthropocene is an original devised, physical theatre piece that explores the current geological epoch—where human activity has drastically impacted our climate, environment, and social conditions. This multi-year transdisciplinary performance research project combines innovative multimedia projection design, an original musical score, dance, and performance into a single endeavor bringing together the people and disciplines of ASU’s School of Music, Dance and Theatre, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, School of Sustainability, and Global Futures Laboratory. It will premiere at ASU in Fall 2023 as part of the Theatre season. w: https://anthropoceneproject.com/

The ‘Turn It Around!’ initiative focuses specifically on the role of education in turning around the environmental catastrophe. Mobilizing the power of socially engaged art to move people into action, this project is designed to ‘move’ politicians, policymakers, and educators into a different state of thinking, doing, and being. At the center of the initiative is one of the most basic learning tools – a deck of flashcards – designed by youth for decision-makers at all levels to challenge them to think, see, and act in new ways. Called “Turn It Around!”, the deck features cards displaying climate crisis inspired artwork created by youth on one side, and motives, actions, and facts for policy makers to guide their decisions about climate futures, on the other side. w: https://turnitaroundcards.org/

Speakers Bios

Rachel Bowditch (PhD) is a theatre director and a Full Professor in Theatre in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design. She is author of three books, On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man (Seagull/University of Chicago Press 2010), Performing Utopia co-edited with Pegge Vissicaro (Seagull/University of Chicago Press 2018) and Physical Dramaturgy: Perspectives from the Field co-edited with Jeff Casazza and Annette Thornton (Routledge 2018). She is currently working on her fourth book, The Rasaboxes Sourcebook: Inside Richard Schechner's Performance Workshop, under contract with Routledge with Paula Murray Cole and Michele Minnick (expected publication 2023).  

Karen Jean Martinson, PhD, (she, her, hers) is an Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her scholarly and creative work explores the intersection of contemporary USAmerican performance, consumer culture, neoliberalism, and the processes of identification, interrogating issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She also writes and talks (constantly) about dramaturgy and dramaturgical thinking.

​​​​​​​Steven Beschloss is an award-winning writer, editor, journalist and filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice with appointments in the College of Global Futures and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is the Founding Director of the Narrative Storytelling Initiative across the university and leads the Narratives focus of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. 

Adriene Jenik is an artist, educator and end of life doula who resides in the desert. Her computer and media art spans 3 decades, including pioneering work in interactive cinema and live telematic performance. Her mediated performance projects have been written about in The New York Times, published in The Drama Review, and recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation. Jenik’s current creative research projects include “data humanization” performances, immersive learning experiments and street performances reading “climate futures” with her ECO tarot deck.

Iveta Silova is Professor and Associate Dean of global engagement at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. She also serves as a Senior Global Futures Scholar at the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Her research focuses on globalization and postsocialist education transformations, including intersections between post-colonialism and post-socialism after the Cold War. Iveta’s most recent work engages with the decoloniality of knowledge production and being, childhood memories, ecofeminism, and environmental sustainability.

Ann Nielsen is the Director for the Office of Global Engagement in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her interests in education and research have focused upon teacher professional subjectivities, teacher leadership, and school leadership using visual and qualitative methodologies.

Facilitator Bio: Scott Cloutier (we/us/our) is an Assistant Professor and Senior Sustainability Scholar in the School of Sustainability and the College of the Global Futures. We founded and direct the Sustainability and Happiness Lab (Happy Lab), and the Sustainable Neighborhoods for Happiness™ (Happy Hoods) project, where our research interests center on understanding when sustainable outcomes and happiness coincide.

SPONSORS

The Leonardo/ISAST LASERs are a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of the LASERs is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 50 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website. @lasertalks