Exhibition: Living within a Bounded World

The Boundary project, funded by the Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership, was conceived as a seed-project that explores novel ways to teach and learn transformative change, resilience, sustainable behaviour and care for the world in the face of an ecological crisis. The final goal of the exchanges is to develop a taught undergraduate course in Art and Science, built on a curriculum that facilitates the construction of the sustainable communities of our collective future, both ecologically and socially. Since January 2022, a group of science and art educators/researchers from different backgrounds and different institutions came together in a series of workshops online and in Oxford to engage in interdisciplinary exchanges related to the climate crisis and its impact on human and non-human life. We explored current limitations when teaching art and science subjects in regard to the impending ecological crisis and its social components (such as displacement of communities, loss of habitat and water/food scarcity).  We also explored what tools, techniques and knowledge students need to build the world’s future communities on a sustainable, equitable and just foundation. The workshops were followed by an artist residency programme in July 2022 involving some of the participants.

The project will now culminate in an exhibition. Nine artists that have participated in the project were invited to translate their experience of the project into collaborative works of art. The brief was, to engage on the local level with the planetary boundaries of soil, water, energy, food supply and transfer of resources. Juniper Bloomberg, Eleanor Capstick, Anya Gleizer, Alice Hackney, Eleanor Holton, Katja Lehmann, Neeli Malik, Nikyta Palmisani and Katrine Spilling set about to map, weave and connect their visions of existing boundaries and visionary futures of sustainable community action. The resulting works of art will be shown in the Barn Gallery, St. John's College, Oxford, St Giles, Oxford OX13JP from Nov. 25-29, 2022.