Lecture, Performance
RESPONSE ABILITY* A Manifesto on Ecocide
Nov 19, 2021
3:30–5:00pm ET
LIVESTREAMED
In the framework of the ArtsLink Assembly 2021, the Argentinian collective Etcétera presents a manifesto, a manifestation about ecocide, as part of the second chapter of NEO-EXTRA-ACTIVISM, Protocols of Buen Vivir, their project for the 2020–2022 Boris Lurie Vera List Center Fellowship.
Ecocide is the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems—severe harm to nature that is widespread or long-term. In recent months, legal experts from around the world have come together to rework a definition of ecocide, which is intended to be adopted by the international criminal court to prosecute the most atrocious crimes against the environment.
Seeking to give support and visibility to this new definition of ecocide, Etcétera presents lecture/performance RESPONSE-ABILITY* A Manifesto on Ecocide. Joined by Jay Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The New School, and performance artist L.M. Bogad, Etcétera presents material from the second chapter of their current research through a collection of voices, images, testimonies, and public actions around this topic.
The first chapter of their fellowship project, NO WORK, NO SHOP: Socio-Environmental Imagination and Pedagogies of Action coincided with Earth Day 2021 and featured artists and environmental activists in conversation.
*The word responsibility stylized as “response ability” was a concept developed by John Cage (1912–92) that proposes shifting an ethics of accountability to an aesthetic of engagement.