River Semester Map and Daily Blog
From August 28 - December 9, 2023, the River Semester travelled downstream with stops at river hubs along the way. Follow their progress as they travel downstream. (...)
Reflections on Confluence 2
From May 25th to May 28th, 2023, the Mississippi River Open School gathered in the Twin Cities for Confluence 2. These four reflections are a multi-faceted portrait of the Confluence. (...)
Spirituality and Ecology: (Re)Membering Black Women’s Legacies
I no longer have to be cut off from my being. I no longer have to be cut off from the earth. (...)
The Remote Sensation of Disintegration
Experimental film exploring Louisiana’s ecological bodies and their segregation by extractivism—the process of extracting natural resources from the Earth to sell on the world market—witnessed from the water of the Mississippi River, the sky over Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, and satellites accessed from a computer in London.
An ongoing work, the film is formed from a variety of materials including images from research trips, oil industry datasets, and audio recording reflecting on the knowledg (...)
On the Recuperative Mismanagement of a Cosmopolitan Fish
To close the opening week of The Shape of a Practice, artists created a convivial meal-at-a-distance with so-called invasive species. From a kitchen in Carbondale, Illinois, artist Sarah Lewison, alongside storyteller and soul food authority Swan Parsons, prepare a meal of Asian carp, opening up questions related to an eco-logic of planetary care and our relationships to habitat. From Berlin and Chicago, artist and biologist Andrew Yang, biologist Florian Rutland and artist Alexandra Toland prep (...)
Water Language: A Conversation with Shanai Matteson and Oscar Tuazon
From the Iron Range in Minnesota’s Northern reaches to industrial farming in the South, to the strength and vibrancy of its Native reservations, it’s impossible to write about rural Minnesota as a singular place. While urban areas concentrate complexity, rural Minnesota exhibits it over expansive distances. Many of the issues that have made the Twin Cities the recent focus of national attention are echoed in the state's rural struggles. These include explosive fights over social and racial justi (...)
