The climate crisis we are experiencing has been exacerbated by a crisis of representation. Artists from different disciplines have been trying to come up with images and narratives that could capture the core issues of this crisis, with varying success. Instead of staging fictional narratives, some theaters started inviting climate scientists and scholars to address the issues of climate change in direct conversations with each other and with the audience. Following that model, TAPS is inviting prominent scientists, artists, activists, and scholars who are working on this important issue to participate in Climate Conversations, which we offer as a direct response to the closure of representation caused by the slow violence of global warming. TAPS and co-sponsor StanfordLive, are approaching these dialogues the same TAPS would our regular productions; they are a new form of documentary theater.  

This event is co-sponsored by StanfordLive.

Moderated by TAPS Professor Branislav Jakovljevic

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

T. J. Demos is the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, at University of California, Santa Cruz, and founding Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. Demos is the author of several books, including Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (Sternberg Press, 2017); Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology(Sternberg Press, 2016); The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis (Duke University Press, 2013) – winner of the College Art Association’s 2014 Frank Jewett Mather Award – and Return to the Postcolony: Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2013). He recently co-edited The Routledge Companion on Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (2021), was a Getty Research Institute Fellow (Spring 2020), and directed the Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar research project Beyond the End of the World (2019-21). Demos was Chair and Chief Curator of the Climate Collective, providing public programming related to the 2021 Climate Emergency > Emergence program at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Maat) in Lisbon. His new book, Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come, is now out from Sternberg Press.

Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment and of the Precourt Institute for Energy.  He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering, an A.B. in Economics, and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Stanford in 1988.  He received an M.S. and PhD in Atmospheric Sciences in 1991 and 1994, respectively, from UCLA and joined the faculty at Stanford in 1994. His career focuses on better understanding air pollution and global warming problems and developing large-scale clean, renewable energy solutions to them. He has published six books, including his latest, “No Miracles Needed,” and about 180 peer-reviewed journal articles. He is ranked as the #1 most impactful scientist in the world in the field of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences and #6 in the field of Energy among those first publishing past 1985. He received the 2005 American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award and the 2013 American Geophysical Union Ascent Award for his work on black carbon climate impacts and the 2013 Global Green Policy Design Award for developing state and country energy plans. In 2015, he received a Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for his work on the grid integration of 100% wind, water and solar energy systems. In 2018, he received the Judi Friedman Lifetime Achievement Award “For a distinguished career dedicated to finding solutions to large-scale air pollution and climate problems.” In 2019 and 2022, he was selected as “one of the world’s 100 most influential people in climate policy” by Apolitical. In 2022, he received the Visionary Clean Tech Influencer of the Year award at the World Clean Tech Awards. He has served on an advisory committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, appeared in a TED talk, appeared on the David Letterman Show to discuss converting the world to clean energy, and cofounded The Solutions Project nonprofit. His work is the scientific basis of the energy portion of the U.S. Green New Deal and laws to go to 100% renewable energy in cities, states, and countries worldwide.