Brandon Ballengée has a unique quality of attention, one that is not constrained by traditional distinctions between art & science and working & living. He wants to share that capacity to witness to liberate everyone's imagination of what this world can be, a world we are of rather than just in. This ecological consciousness informs his work as a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator.
Show Notes:
- biodiversity (07:00)
- trophic networks (13:10)
- ethnography and buffer zones (15:00)
- citizens getting involved to help biodiversity
- participatory and co-creative nature of his work
- commons spaces (16:00)
- Garret Hardin Tragedy of the Commons (16:20)
- antiform and antidisciplinary (17:00)
- complexity (17:10)
- Malamp project (19:50)
- evince empathy not fear (21:30)
- consilience (23:15)
- the myth of either/or (24:00)
- how do you do both art and science? (24:30)
- how we might approach conservation - connection (27:30)
- Ghosts of the Gulf exhibit (28:40)
- Stan Sessions (29:00)
- Taylor Energy Spill (32:30)
- What adaptation looks like (33:45)
- how we persist (35:00)
- giving yourself over to culture (38:30)
- Atelier de la Nature(39:00)
- Newton Harrison and ecological art (44:30)
- the impact of our actions (47:30)
- long view of time, the long arc of change (47:45)
- muscular hope (48:00)
- superorganisms and cooperation (50:00)
- civic engagement (50:30)
- Lightning round (55:00)
- Book: Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (and EO Wilson's the Future of Life)
- Passion: food as a way to educate
- Heart sing: learning about gardening
- Screwed up: process to make crude oil paintings
- Find Brandon online:
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series