Outdoor School: Contemporary Environmental Art
As I write this in the haze of late summer, I realize it will be months before this review reaches the public. By then, we’ll be in the darkness of winter across socalled Canada. For now, though, the days are long and hot, the sun red against polluted skies as wildfires blaze across vast territories. It’s a crisis, a climate emergency that will be made more palatable by winter’s cold. In the veil of urgency that summer brings, I wonder what can be done to rectify this disaster.
Diane Borsato and Amish Morrell’s (2021) offers an encouraging vision of artistic and pedagogical include Borsato and Morrell’s curatorial practice under the same name, performances and exhibitions by FASTWÜRMS, BUSH Gallery, Sameer Farooq, Ayumi Goto, and Jamie Ross, among others; a standout essay by Karen Houle on the ethics of education and farming; and a conversation between Jen Delos Reyes, Borsato, and Morrell that illuminates the editors’ pedagogical practice. The book is a counterpoint to the grief and uncertainty of climate change. It assembles a collection of artist projects and interventions that inspire reciprocity and commitment to our lived environments through multidirectional knowledge sharing. Each project emphasizes a mode of looking, learning, gathering, and sharing that honours the knowledge of both experts and amateurs.
