2021 marks yet another year of fatalities from natural and human disasters. With the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis spreading worldwide, we continue to rethink how to coexist with other living beings on Earth. Besides the natural ecology, how do we engage with other forms of ecologies, including social, political, artistic, and even academic ones?

As a member of Shared Campus, Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) is honored to host this first Critical Ecologies (CE) symposium, bringing together various academics, artists, and students concerned with the agenda from the CE theme group.

Our agenda is being formed with thoughts such as those of Canadian anthropologist Julie Cruikshank (2006) in her study of glaciers pointed out how “local knowledge” often conjoins social and biophysical processes. Tao Indigenous writer and anthropologist Syaman Rapongan from the Orchid Island of Taiwan reminds us how local philosophies from the ocean can teach us different values systems and ways of living. Brazilian Indigenous movement leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak observed that COVD-19 discriminates against humans, due to the way human societies work. “It does not kill birds, bears, or any other beings, just humans” (2020, 3). He even emphasizes that we have to abandon our anthropocentrism (2020, 6).

This symposium and conference bring together researchers and practitioners working in the intersections of art, ecology, indigeneity, geopolitics, as well as science and technology studies, to build a cross-regional network of sustainable collaboration.

*For more information of each panel, visit Shared Campus.

**Parallel event – Art and Critical Ecologies: Multiscalar Engagements organised by Wanwu Practice Group.