Institute for Integrative Conservation Events

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The Language of Trees: Forest Thinking to Reimagine the World

October 1, 2024
3pm - 5:15pm
Location
Swem Library, Ford Classroom
400 Landrum Dr
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
Access & Features
  • Free food
  • Open to the public
  • Registration/RSVP
Katie Holten talk event flyer

The Institute for Integrative Conservation and W&M Libraries welcome artist, activist, and best-selling author Katie Holten for two events in celebration of W&M Year of the Arts.

What is the language we need to live right now?

How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?

Katie will take us through an exploration of these questions and the importance of the human connection with the more-than-human world as we collectively face threats of biodiversity loss and climate breakdown.

Katie joins us at W&M for an illustrated talk on the Rights of Nature, her art practice, and her book The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, a compendium that gathers together some of the world’s most exciting writers, artists, ecologists and activists, to reveal the wonders of the forest and our indelible connection to trees. Illustrated and curated by Katie, an internationally renowned artist, the book gifts readers her tree alphabet which she uses to masterfully translate and illuminate writing in praise of the natural world from over fifty collaborators, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Macfarlane, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Winona LaDuke, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Andrea Zittel and Amitav Ghosh. 

She invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. 

There will be two opportunities to engage with Katie on October 1st.

TREE DRAWING SESSION

Join Katie in Crim Dell Meadow to find your connection with trees and spend a morning drawing them. We will have some paper and pencils on hand but encourage you to bring your own favorite drawing tools. 

Tuesday, October 1st, 2024

10:45 AM to 12:00 PM

Crim Dell Meadow, W&M, Williamsburg, VA

This event will move indoors if the weather is bad so plan to come rain or shine.


PUBLIC TALK

The Language of Trees: Forest Thinking to Reimagine the World

Tuesday, October 1st, 2024

3:00 to 4:30 PM

Ford Classroom, Ground Level, Swem Library

4:30 to 5:15 PM

A book signing and light reception will take place in the Botetourt Gallery 

A limited number of books will be available for purchase at the event.

Please register to attend the talk.

No registration is needed for the tree drawing session.

These events are free and open to the public.


About Katie Holten:

Katie Holten is an artist, activist and bestselling author based in New York City and Ardee, Ireland. Her work investigates the entangled relationships between humans and the natural world.

Holten grew up in rural Ireland and studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, Cornell University in New York and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

For over twenty years she has made unconventional works that intersect art, activism, ecology, language and history. At the root of her practice is a commitment to fighting the climate and biodiversity emergency. Her collaborative research based work expores the inextricable relationship between Humans and Nature, between organic systems and human-made systems.

Holten has conceived major public commissions including TREE MUSEUM (2009-2010) for New York City’s Grand Concourse commissioned by the NYC Parks Department, the Bronx Museum and Wave Hill.

Holten is a MacDowell Fellow and recipient of numerous Grants and Fellowships, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Pollock Krasner Award, and multiple Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Nevada Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

While a Fellow of the Arts & Humanities at the NYC Urban Field Station she created a New York City Tree Alphabet with the NYC Parks Department and the US Forest Service. During lockdown, Holten made an Irish Tree Alphabet (2020) to explore language ecosystems and the importance of our words and the stories that we share. She is currently translating ULYSSES by James Joyce into Irish Trees to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its publication.

Since 2014 Holten has hosted monthly Sunday Salons in her home for a community of artists, scientists, writers, philosophers and engaged citizens to explore the possibilities for Art and Activism in the Anthropocene. In 2018 she co-founded Friends of Ardee Bog. The community group received government funding through a Peatland Community Engagement Scheme (2022) to undertake an ecological survey of Ardee bog.

Katie has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Irish Times, The Washington Post, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak.

This event is part the Institute for Integrative Conservation's 2024-25 Conservation Speaker Series: "Creativity and Innovation in Conservation", and is presented in collaboration with William & Mary Libraries and with support from the Muscarelle Museum of Art in celebration of the W&M Year of the Arts.

Sponsored by: Institute for Integrative Conservation and W&M Libraries

Contact

https://www.wm.edu/offices/iic/