Please join The Commonwealth Club of California and UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities for the second in a series of dialogues on catastrophe, storytelling and the present

Please join The Commonwealth Club of California and UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities for the second in a series of dialogues on catastrophe, storytelling and the present moment. In “Climate Change and Sacred Groves,” Townsend Center scholar Sugata Ray will meet with visual artist Ranu Mukherjee to investigate the relationship between the natural world and the sacred realm, especially as it has developed in India over the last several centuries of civilization and the rise of the Anthropocene era.

In his most recent book, Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata shows how a site-specific and ecologically grounded theology emerged in northern India in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. His interests dovetail in unexpected and compelling ways with Ranu’s visionary and captivating recent work, which positions the banyan tree as a meeting point between ecology and culture. Their conversation will be an opportunity for viewers to contemplate and rethink the role of art as it relates to contemporary concerns around climate, disease, human flourishing and the sacred.

Sugata Ray is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and writing focus on climate change and the visual arts from the 1500s onward. Ray is the author of Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (2019); Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence (2019; coedited); and Ecologies, Aesthetics, and Histories of Art (forthcoming; coedited).

Ranu Mukherjee is a visual artist who makes paintings, animations and large-scale installations. Her current work focuses on shifting senses of ecology, non-human agency, diaspora, migration and transnational feminist experience. Her most recent installation was presented at the ecologically focused 2019 Karachi Biennale; she has exhibited solo at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Asian Art Museum, and the de Young Museum. She is an associate professor in graduate fine art at the California College of the Arts. Mukherjee is represented by Gallery Wendi Norris.

NOTES
Artwork from The Met (in public domain): "Krishna and Balarama by a River: Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of Lord Vishnu)"

Part one in this series, “The Book of Exodus,” can be viewed here


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Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic – of wildness and wisdom – of vision and dreaming. Yet beyond mythic realms of

Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic – of wildness and wisdom – of vision and dreaming. Yet beyond mythic realms of imagination, we’ve largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science – how to extract maximum resources and profits.


Suzanne Simard is a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. The story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other, for the long haul.
Featuring


Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, is an expert in the synergies and complexities of forests, as well as the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices. Her groundbreaking research focuses on the relationships between plants, microbes, soils, carbon, nutrients, and water that underpin the adaptability of ecosystems, particularly the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate interplant communication. Learn more about Suzanne Simard and her work at her website. (https://suzannesimard.com/)
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Dispatches From the Mother Trees (https://bioneers.org/suzanne-simard-dispatches-from-mother-trees-zstf2112/) , Suzanne Simard’s keynote address to the 2021 Bioneers Conference, in which she discusses the dire global consequences of logging old-growth rainforests, and nature-based solutions that combine Western science and Indigenous knowledge for preserving and caring for these invaluable forest ecosystems for future generations.


Lessons from the Underground (https://bioneers.org/lessons-from-the-underground-panel-zstf2112/) , a panel discussion from the 2021 Bioneers Conference featuring Suzanne Simard as well as Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery, a wife and husband team of scientific researchers whose groundbreaking work on the microbial life of soil has revealed its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival. Moderated by Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan. 


Intelligence in Nature (https://bioneers.org/intelligence-in-nature-media-collection/) , a deep-dive resource featuring leading experts in this burgeoning field.


What We Owe Our Trees (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/29/what-we-owe-our-trees) , an article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker.






This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage (https://bioneers.org/bioneers-radio/)  to learn more.