Douglas Strang asked ecoartscotland to highlight the Carrying the Fire weekend 20-22nd April 2012 at Wiston Lodge near Biggar in the Scottish Borders.

I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the colour of the moon. And in the dream I knew he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold.

from ‘No Country for Old Men’ by Cormac McCarthy

The Dark Mountain Project is a cultural movement for an age of global disruption. It is a growing network of writers, thinkers, artists, and craftspeople who have stopped believing in the stories our civilisation tells itself. We believe we are entering an age of material decline, ecological collapse and social and political uncertainty, and that our cultural responses should reflect this, rather than denying it. Carrying the Fire hopes to become the northern cousin of Uncivilisation, the main Dark Mountain Festival. Hosted by Wiston Lodge near Biggar in South Lanarkshire, it will be a smaller event, more intimate, but still with a strong programme of speakers, poets and performers. And still asking the question: where are the stories to guide us through this era of crisis and change?

The dominant stories – those that speak of growth, endless progress, more of everything – continue to be proclaimed throughout the land, but there’s a hollowness in the telling and a growing mistrust of the tale. At ‘Carrying the Fire’ we will hear from those with a different perspective:

Paul Kingsnorth, co-founder of Dark Mountain, will be there to discuss the Project – where it’s come from and where it’s going.

Margaret Elphinstone will read from and discuss ‘The Gathering Night’, which is set during the Mesolithic era. Her novel is a celebration of ‘wildness’ and of the ‘animism’ which once formed the basis of our relationship to the natural world.

Kenneth White’s ‘Geopoetics’ is correlated to the Dark Mountain idea of ‘uncivilised writing’. Norman Bissell, director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, will discuss White’s ideas and use them in an exploration of ‘the Golden Land’ – the utopian vision which so haunts Orwell’s ’1984′.

Sharon Blackie of TwoRavens Press and the soon to be launched journal ‘Earthlines’, will discuss the art of storytelling and the ways that stories connect.

And there will be other talks and tellings, including from Luke Devlin, director of the Centre for Human Ecology, the artist Matthew Donnelly, and Gehan MacLeod of the GalGael Trust. There will be art workshops and ecopoetry sessions, storytelling for children (and adults), and opportunities to explore the land and the woods round Wiston Lodge – including Tinto Hill (2334 ft) beneath which Wiston nestles.

In the evenings there will be music from the likes of Mairi Campbell as well as more informal sessions. On Saturday night, we will set off into the woods for the latest instalment of Liminal – an otherworldly mix of art, poetry and physical theatre.

So, if you can’t wait till ‘Uncivilisation’ in August, or are based in the North and want to support a Dark Mountain event closer to home, join us for what promises to be an amazing weekend on the 20th – 22nd April. Come, celebrate spring amidst the hills of the Borders, gather by the fire in a clearing in the woods. There are stories to be told…

For more information and how to book tickets click here.

This call for papers articulates an argument for a broad, in the terms of the call multi-discipliary, approach to environmental issues.  The text of the call is a clear and cogent case for the involvement of a wide range of disciplines and positions to develop an ethics.

A Workshop at the 13th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, *“The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity: Reconciling ‘The Three Narratives’—Art, Science, and Philosophy”*

University of Cyprus, Nicosia, July 2 – 6, 2012

THEME OF THE WORKSHOP

Environmental issues are typically framed within public discourse as problems that require empirical information and technological solutions.  This paradigm holds not only scientific but also philosophical assumptions, most importantly that the real world is the one described by natural science, the world of scientific realism. In this worldview, all other disciplines (such as ethics, the qualitative social sciences, and politics and policy) are assimilated as “tools in the toolbox” used to solve the problems previously defined by Western science. The intensity of current environmental crises—especially global climate destabilization—energizes this focus on practical problem-solving and on technological and policy solutions within existing institutional, economic, and political frameworks. However, this approach fails to recognize that the humanistic disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and the arts, both construct and express knowledge of nature that exceeds the bounds of problem-solving and the ontology of scientific realism. Further, claims about nature that appeal to the authority of Western science, though masked as objective, are frequently deployed to undergird ideological constructions about race, class, gender, and nation; the authority to make claims about nature is inseparable from political power.

Underlying this default position of the natural sciences is the unexamined assumption that environmental problems are encountered independently of any context, values, history, or disciplinary biases.  Humanities scholars in the emerging fields of ecocriticism, environmental art, environmental philosophy, and related areas of inquiry vigorously challenge this assumption, arguing that our environmental problems are inescapably ethical, historical, and political. The very definitions of environmental problems at any given moment are a function of human ideas and negotiations that have a particular cultural location and history and that reflect specific concepts of ethical responsibility and justice. Consequently, the methods of the natural sciences, although necessary for meeting our environmental challenges, cannot replace the interpretive, critical, and artistic methods of the humanities. The emergence of the “environmental humanities,” as a multidisciplinary site of convergence within academic scholarship, responds to this need.

This workshop will engage with the emerging disciplines of the environmental humanities to pose a series of questions, including:

* How are the methods and epistemology of the humanities distinct from those of the empirical sciences?

* What would a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to questions of the environment look like, and how can this be negotiated within current institutional limitations?

* What impact can the humanities have on public discourse and political will in specific areas, such as environmental justice and climate change?

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Please submit two-page abstracts by email in Word format to the workshop organizers by*15 March 2012*. Each presenter will have 20 minutes and is asked to present rather than read a paper. Abstracts of accepted presentations will be circulated to the participants in advance of the conference.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Final versions of the papers (not to exceed 3,000 words, or 10 double-spaced pages, including notes) will be reviewed by the workshop organizers for possible publication in the conference proceedings.

THE CONFERENCE

This workshop is planned under the auspices of the 13th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, on the theme “The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity:

Reconciling ‘The Three Narratives’—Art, Science, and Philosophy.” For more information, visit ISSEI’s website at http://issei2012.haifa.ac.il/

THE VENUE

The workshop will be held at the University of Cyprus – Main Campus, Kallipoleos Avenue 75, Nicosia 2100 Cyprus.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Janet Fiskio, Environmental Studies, Oberlin College, jfiskio@oberlin.edu <mailto:jfiskio@oberlin.edu>

Ted Toadvine, Philosophy and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon, toadvine@uoregon.edu <mailto:toadvine@uoregon.edu>

–

Ted Toadvine
uoregon.edu/~toadvine

Head, Department of Philosophy
Associate Professor, Philosophy& Environmental Studies
University of Oregon

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Environmental Philosophy
ephilosophy.uoregon.edu

Co-Editor, Chiasmi International
filosofia.unimi.it/~chiasmi/

Editor, Ohio University Press Series in Continental Thought
ohioswallow.com/series/Series+in+Continental+Thought

Scott Donaldson at Creative Scotland wanted ecoartscotland to highlight this opportunity to hear Tim Flannery (mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist) speak:

6pm Wednesday 4th April, Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s leading thinkers and writers. As a scientist, explorer and conservationist his achievements are many. Amongst them are the discovery of over thirty new species of mammal, being honoured Australian of the Year in 2007, co-founding and chairing the Copenhagen Climate Council, and selling over a million copies of his book The Weather Makers, one of the most influential texts in our understanding of global warming.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear Tim speak about his extensive work.

The event is jointly presented by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Commonwealth Society’s Oxygen Programme and Creative Scotland’s Creative Futures programme.