November 16, 2023, 4:30-6

This talk brings together a set of objects and artworks, including collections of taxidermy and natural history, the Blaschka glass models, photographic works by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Diane Fox, alongside material ecocritical thinking and to ask what it might mean to deliberately de- and dis- and re-place displayed natural and animal forms across periods in the guise of ‘knowing’ at this particular temporal moment; and, in turn, what a material and eco-critical reappraisal of perceived encyclopaedic epistemologies of the visual might do to our engagement with this material, at a moment when the environment, and widespread environmental shifts, is very much the epicenter of our social gaze.