SFSIA 2022 | New York City
Deep Ecology in the Cognitive Capitalocene

For 2022, Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art has partnered with The Brooklyn Rail to present “Deep Ecology in the Cognitive Capitalocene,” an in-person program in Brooklyn, New York, alongside a free public lecture series held online.

The theme “Deep Ecology in the Cognitive Capitalocene” references Gregory Bateson’s book Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and builds upon its foundations to produce a deep ecology of the expanded brain in the twenty-first century. In the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene human activity becomes the dominant influence on global climate and the environment. During this time, cosmotechnics, “the unification of the cosmos and the moral through technical activities, ​​whether craft-making or art-making,” (Yuk Hui) is based upon conspicuous consumption and resultant destruction. Following Arne Næss’s model of a multidisciplinary deep ecology, the well-being and importance of all (non-human) life is inextricably bound to our own in a facile network of mutual respect and shared dignity. As such, we need to adapt to ecocentrism rather than anthropocentrism and give precedence to the ecosphere rather than the biosphere. In this respect, the program will aim towards developing a means to decolonize ecology by recognizing the importance of the Anthropocene’s relationship to capitalism, racism and sexism to constitute a new ecological ethics. As Jedediah Purdy has suggested, we need to produce a new environmental imagination. > READ MORE