A recent $200,000 grant received by the Center for the Arts (CFA) and the sciences will pair together what is typically considered an unusual couple: the sciences and the arts. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters has awarded the money with an ambitious plan in mind: an interdisciplinary attack on global warming.
Through the efforts of its organizers, Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts, and Professor of Earth and Environmental Science Barry Chernoff, the grant will be used for a project entitled “Feet to the Fire,” which will explore global climate change issues through artists, performers, and scientists.
Of 130 proposals made to the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, only eight were chosen to receive grants. Wesleyan was one of only two schools nation-wide to have received the full amount of $200,000.
Tatge explained that, in the past, she has worked with members of the sciences, particularly regarding developments in genetics. However, the inspiration for this project came from a casual discussion rather than from the laboratory.
“The idea was born through conversations between me and Laurel Appel [of the Biology Department] in saying, ‘what is another issue that is just as urgent as the implications of genetic research and testing?’” said Tatge. “She said the next urgent thing is global climate change.”
After speaking with Professor Chernoff of the Earth and Environmental Science Department, the proposal gradually came into being through the involvement of Ann Carlson, a choreographer, conceptual artist, and social activist.
“At the same time, I had met Ann Carlson, one of 11 choreographers [we have] worked with in the past,” Tatge explained. “She does land-based work as well as social activism. We then had a series of meetings between Ann, Barry, and me. We went and visited with different faculty and different departments [and] also met with [the] Green Street [Arts Center] and [the] Jonah Center [for Earth and Art].”
Tatge was aware of the challenges facing many university projects that are carried out with little to no community involvement. As a founder of the Green Street Arts Center, Tatge believed that the inclusion of local organizations and individuals is one element of the project she finds most fruitful and rewarding.
“In the end, we wrote what was a very compelling proposal—the largest grant ever received by the CFA in its history,” she said. “It will allow us to launch a campus-and community-wide project…We are hoping to organically develop [the project] in complete collaboration with our community partners.”
Tatge and her colleagues allowed themselves six months of planning, the first major meeting of which occurred last Thursday. She saw this as both a practical way of balancing faculty schedules, and something that contributed to the success and feasibility of the proposal as a whole.
The project officially begins in January 2008, with the annual symposium “Where On Earth Are We Going?” and will continue on into June of 2009 with a series of creative amalgamations of the arts and sciences.
One event to look out for next semester is a team-taught course by Carlson and Chernoff, focused on the landfill in the North End of Middletown. Other events, still in the first stages of planning, will include such experimental projects such as commissioning a composer to write a musical score based on sounds in nature.
As varied as they may be, Tatge explained that all these events are encompassed by the project’s title, “Feet Under Fire.”
“We all have to put our feet to the fire in this issue—we are warming,” she said. “It seemed to have a nice level of urgency and artistic flare to it, making it something that everyone could get excited about it.”
Chernoff commented that it is precisely this urgency that will come across if global warming is examined in an interdisciplinary framework.
“In integrating art and science together, I think we come out with not only a complete understanding of the effect of global warming, but we come out with a richer way of communicating it to our society as well,” he said.
Undoubtedly, Tatge sees this grant as making leaps and bounds towards a more comprehensive view of global warming, while in the process bringing a series of innovative events to next semester’s art calendar.
“There couldn’t be a more urgent issue that we need to face…this puts us in an excellent position to deal with how a university can tackle and comprehend this issue.”
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