This symposium brings together a diverse group of practitioners, including artists, designers, activists, scholars, scientists, policy analysts, urban planners, and thinkers to discuss what may well be the most important issue of our time: access to clean water and the fight for environmental justice. Held in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Stamps Gallery and building on themes present in the UMMA exhibition Watershed and Stamps Gallery’s LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family in Three Acts, The Ways of Water symposium continues to unravel the story of water, its critical role, and the way it connects us all.
Diverse practitioners have been invited in order to underscore the need for a multiplicity of voices needed to confront these issues. The Ways of Water symposium brings together perspectives of artists, activists, community members alongside those of scientists and policy makers.
Additional information and full 2-day schedule.
Day 2: Saturday, October 8, 1 – 5 pm
Stamps Gallery, 201 South Division Street
1:00 pm: Session 4 — Breaking Waves: Research Around, Through, and With Water
Panelists: Heidi Kumao, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt + Denielle Emans, David Porter, and Cedric Taylor
Breaking Waves surveys research and pedagogy across the University of Michigan at the intersection of water, world-building, and environmental justice. Panelists will discuss how water is used in teaching and storytelling to repair broken relationships with water and how water subjects are used as pedagogical tools.
3:00 pm: Session 5 — Water Futures: Decolonization, Access, Systems, and Community
Panelists: Daniel Brown, Amber Hasan and Shea Cobb, Branko Kerkez, and Andrea Pierce
Moderator: María Arquero de Alarcón
Water Futures explores our understanding of water — as a vital resource for the life of a community, a reservoir of ecological memory, and a public trust or a fundamental human right — as we try to envision creative solutions that can change the course of water’s troubled history. Beyond the strict temporality of crisis and response that so often frames recent public narratives about environmental justice, how can artists, academics, and activists help recontextualize the urgency of ecological action to achieve an equitable water future?
4:30 pm: Closing Remarks
Symposium events are free and open to all. Please contact Jennifer Junkermeier-Khan, Stamps Gallery at jenjkhan@umich.edu for additional information or with questions.
