Biodiversity Online Exhibition

This is the 7th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Most people are accustomed to thinking of the world only as it relates to human wishes and needs.
After all, the vast majority of our attention is taken up with politics, the economy, family,
entertainment—human interests.
It’s become all too easy to forget that nature even exists—as our communities have grown more and more urbanized, and the processes of growing food, making clothes and buildings, and producing energy are handled in large industrial operations far from view.
There are millions of kids in North America who’ve never seen the stars at night, visited a national park,
or picked a wild blackberry. […]”
Richard Heinberg, an excerpt of the Think Resilience free Online Course, lesson 8: “Biodiversity”.

Artists

Kirsten Aaboe, Claude Benzrihem, Marianne Bickett, Michele Guieu, Tessa Grundon, Rosemary Hall, Petra Jelinek, Pascal Ken, Amy Landesberg, Rosalind Lowry, Ana Martinez Orizondo, Sarah Stone, Pamela Tudor, Marcela Villaseñor, Eileen Wold

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Exhibition

Yes &

photograph

ID: photograph of a hand holding a snake skeleton in the shape of an ampersand.
2021
  • Rosemary Hall

Reindeer Lichen installation

Installation

2021, Derrytresk Bog, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.
2021
  • Rosalind Lowry

Postscript

Photograph, 2021 Found work glove, mugwort, and grasses from root systems growing through glove, water, specimen tray.

2021
  • Tessa Grundon

“la Naturaleza es nuestra Religión”
“Nature is our Religion”

Digital photograph
2021

2021
  • Marcela Villaseñor

Sad Story

Acrylic and sand on canvas
24"x48"

Shrinking Biodiversity thru deforestation is wreaking havoc on plant and animal species.
2021
  • Pamela Tudor

Parched

Mixed media on canvas
36"x46"

Deforestation turns wild land supporting plant and animal biodiversity onto plowed monoculture land. Not good for humans and other living beings!
2021
  • Pamela Tudor

Can you feel me?

Part of my tree stories series, a short visual poem
My tree stories (whether a pastel drawing, photo or video) begin by being present during meditative walks in nature. Whether in an urban setting like Central Park, NYC or the Mashomack Preserve in Shelter Island, NY, my senses become hyper-aware around trees. My spirit attunes to specific trees, stumps, branches, trunks and the stories they have to tell.
These visual stories reference animism, deep ecology and the mystical power of trees and everything around them. Whether a stone, stick, fungi, leaves or grass, its complete composition makes up a unified, sacred space of transcendence and transformation. I am most intrigued by severed trees and their broken-openness, for it is in that state that I can see into their soul. A soul in a continuum to its next form.
2021
  • Ana Martinez Orizondo

Paradox

Photograph, 2021.

Mojave, Mojave Desert, California. I just came back from the Mojave Desert. I spent time there during the last years, and I witnessed the rapidity of the development of windmills and solar farms. There is no way around transitioning to renewable energy, but how can it be done with a minimal impact on those rich, fragile, and unique ecosystems? “Wind energy is the leading renewable technology towards achieving climate goals, yet biodiversity trade-offs via land take are emerging. Thus, we are facing the paradox of impacting on biodiversity to combat climate change.” Vassiliki Kati, Christina Kassara, Zoi Vrontisi, Aristides Moustakas in “The biodiversity-wind energy-land use nexus in a global biodiversity hotspot” [Scientific paper] “Most of California’s renewable energy comes from utility scale solar energy and large wind farms in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts, which are regions recognized as having exceptional solar insolation and wind resource values. However, California’s deserts are also one of the last great wilderness areas within the contiguous United States, containing thousands of square kilometers of intact, relatively undisturbed desert habitat. The desert southwest has been designated as a “hotspot” of endemism and endangered and threatened species occurrences, and desert systems are fragile and slow to recover once disturbed, due to their arid climate, delicate soils, and slow pace of ecological succession.” Sophie S. Parker, Brian S. Cohen, James Moore in “Impact of solar and wind development on conservation values in the Mojave Desert” [scientific paper - journals.plos.org]
2021
  • Michele Guieu

We Are Part of the Earth?

Multimedia: photographs photoshopped digitally

Those opposable thumbs, relatively big brains, and hairless vulnerability have produced a voracious predator, wreaking havoc on the intricate, interwoven, exquisitely interlaced web of the natural world, formerly untrammeled by human boots. This blind egoism is unsustainable and will drive itself into the ground - literally. The piece is a visualization of the phasing out of humans, along with only some of the other affected animals. The earth will survive, and will regenerate, since life springs from cracks in the concrete.
2021
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Accidental Meadow project –
Transitional landscape in Baltimore Maryland.

Photographs and acrylic on panels
each piece is 6"x6"
2017-2018

Accidental Meadow project looks at temporary ecologies as land is developed, abandoned, and cleared. Examining what is left behind and what biodiversity is missing. This body of work consists of photographs and paintings that explore the natural cycles of temporary ecologies such as meadows as well as the liminal spaces that humans create in the natural world.
2021
  • Eileen Wold

Wolves and Biodiversity: Caught in the Crosshairs

Pencil, marker, watercolor pencil on 8.5x11" printed and colored sheet with wolf biodiversity information,2021.

Science has proven wolves are keystone animals who foster biodiversity, such as the case in Yellowstone that is being carefully documented and studied. When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone after 70 years of absence, the tree, beaver, elk, bird and fish populations were restored to a healthy balance and began to thrive. Wolves keep so many systems in balance. So why are wolves still perceived as enemies? This past year wolves have been and are slated for massive slaughter in several states. Support @centerforbiodiv and @defendersofwildlife efforts to halt this insanity. We should be thanking the wolves, not killing them.
2021
  • Marianne Bickett

Desert Fire

Acrylic on polytab
16.5’ long x 5’ High

I created this mural as a memorial to the Joshua Tree forest fire in the Mojave, August 2020, almost exactly a year ago. That fire, destroyed approximately 1.3 million Joshua Trees and many other species in an already fragile habitat.
2021
  • Sarah Stone

En Voie de disparition 1
Endangered 1

Mixed media (photograph, acrylic paint)
20x20cm

Illustration from NY Public Library digital collections.
2021
  • Pascal Ken

En voie de disparition 2 “Queen Bees”

Mixed media (photograph, acrylic paint)
Illustration from NY Public Library digital collections
20x20cm

2021
  • Pascal Ken

We are all INhabitants!
Tous dans le même bain!

Digital image

2021
  • Claude Benzrihem

The Biodiversity exhibition is based on Think Resilience, the Post Carbon Institute’s free online course. To respond to the art call, we asked the artists to signup and to watch the course, one lesson/video at a time. Each video is approximately 12 minutes long.

[Lesson 1: Introduction to the course]

CHAPTER 1: Our Converging Crises

CHAPTER 2: The Roots and Results of Our Crises

CHAPTER 3: Making Change

CHAPTER 4: Resilience Thinking

  • Lesson 13 – What is Resilience?
  • Lesson 14 – Community Resilience in the 21st Century
  • Lesson 15 – Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience

CHAPTER 5: Economy and Society

  • Lesson 16- How Globalization Undermines Resilience
  • Lesson 17- Economic Relocalization
  • Lesson 18- Social Justice
  • Lesson 19- Education

CHAPTER 6: Basic Needs and Functions

  • Lesson 20- Meeting Essential Community Needs
  • Lesson 21- Resilience in Major Sectors
  • Lesson 22- Review, Assessment & Action

Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.

We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do? Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have a good start on two important skills:

1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.

2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.

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