Staging Sustainability
Arts Community Culture Environment
April 20 - 22, 2011
York University, Toronto
About the Conference
How can we produce art that reflects, celebrates, critiques and advances the cultural life of our community without contributing to the destruction of the setting that inspires these artistic endeavours?
The goal of the Staging Sustainability conference is to create an opportunity for artists and those who support the arts in a myriad of ways – from scholars, critics, producers and designers to policy-makers, industry and government – to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue about the issues and challenges associated with the creation of environmentally sustainable arts practice and performance.
To borrow a phrase from the art critic, author, curator and environmentalist John Grande, we want to foster discussions that will “engage the borderline between art and what is perhaps the most pressing global concern in the new millennium – the quality and sustainability of the environment.”
The conference will consider how the arts engage questions of sustainability from a dual vantage point: cultural and ecological. Thus, the conference encourages an approach to sustainability that encompasses aspects of subjectivity with respect to community and identity.
Staging Sustainability is produced and presented by the Faculty of Fine Arts, York University with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
