Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts and the Department of Classics for Elemental Readings III: The Matter of Earth, a symposium spanning four days and various locations from Thursday, April 23 through Saturday, April 25, and on Friday, May 1. See below for a complete list of events, including guest speakers, panel discussions, art exhibitions, workshops, and contributor abstracts. Free and open to the public. First-come, first-served.

Of all the ancient elements, earth holds most affective power. For Pliny the Elder, earth was “the element that is never angry with mankind”: in her capacity as our "mighty parent” or “mother”, Earth is embodied, personified and feminized; she nurtures us during life with all that she produces and receives our bodies in death, “even bearing our monuments and epitaphs and … extending our memory against the shortness of time.” 

Yet Earth’s generosity also opens her to abuse, whether through violent extraction and pollution or fascist ideologies of “blood and soil.” As the element associated primarily with “matter,” earth provides the materials that make artistic expression possible, especially through the mediums of clay (from which humankind was itself crafted in many mythological traditions), stones, metals, and pigments. In dualist ontologies that denigrate ‘mere matter’ (in contrast to transcendent form, or intellect), terra is all too easily cast as territory, subject to measurement, ownership, conflict, and predation. Earth models and invites the most utopian of projects (co-constitutive visions of symbiosis and sustainability) but is also co-opted into the most dystopian and contested. 
Our symposium explores these tensions across diverse periods, cultures, and media. Whilst classical antiquity’s relationship to earth (as mater and matter, as site of both nourishment and burial) plays a key role, contributions come from across the arts, humanities, and sciences, especially as they engage with both indigenous epistemologies and environmental studies.

This symposium is co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, Department of Performing and Media Arts, Society for the Humanities, and Central New York Humanities Corridor.

Artwork by Jenifer Wightman, Chester River Mud Painting, 2023

COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS APRIL 23-APRIL 25

April 23: Day 1

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Room 121 

-BIOphelia performance  

Performed by Amanda Vialva, New York-based actor, dancer, and singer. 

Design by Adam Washiyama Shulman, multidisciplinary ecoscenographer and theatrical designer.


Assistant Directing by Neah Lakin, JHU Ph.D. candidate, New Swan associate

Script and Staging by PMA Senior Lecturer Theo Black
 
“Bridging PMA’s Fall 24 interdisciplinary symposium of BIOphelia into a touring show allows this work to evolve in exciting ways. Its premiere at New Swan Shakespeare Center in L.A. and recent performance at The Shakespeare Association of America Conference in Denver allowed audiences familiar with Shakespeare’s Hamlet to see a new take. We are honored to have it selected for the World Shakespeare Congress in Verona this summer, and then to continue its journey as part of NYC’s Broadway Climate Summit.

Hamlet tells us that the purpose of playing is to hold "a mirror up to Nature.” Yet Ophelia’s ecological affinity is often overlooked. What if Ophelia's herbs and flowers were given a central place on stage?  What if Ophelia’s seeded potential were to be cultivated, enhanced, and empowered in our shared era of ecological crisis? In this world premiere performance, actor Amanda Vialva revives Ophelia’s journey, to evolve Shakespeare’s story beyond the binary of Hamlet’s existential question (you know the one) and look at how we may adapt as part of nature, and better learn to inter-be. Read more about BIOphelia.

5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, Black Box Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts 

-Introduction

-Earth Symposium Show 

Performed by the students in PMA 4801 Advanced Acting: Arin Sheehan, Josh Martin, Mark Lee, Alina Lee, Kate Moran, Ava Alvarez, Lasya Vadlamani, Ashley Dorais, Naomi Buckle.    

Directed by Theo Black.

7:30 pm: Dinner for visiting speakers

April 24: Day 2

9:00 am – 2:30 pm, Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts 

• 9:00 am – 9:10 am: Welcome address
• 9:10 am – 10:30 am: Panel 1 (chair and respondent: Amrita Chakraborty)
  • Jolene Rickard (Cornell): Indigenous Temporal Shifts in Place-Making
  • Mitchell Herrmann (Yale): Precious Okoyomon: Towards a Natural History
• 10:30 am – 11:00 am: Coffee
• 11:00 am – 12:20 pm: Panel 2 (chair and respondent: Athena Kirk)
  • Nancy Worman (Barnard/Columbia): Stones, Caves, and Girls in the Wild
  • Victoria Wohl (Toronto): The Beauty of Stones
• 12:20 pm – 1:00 pm: Lunch
• 1:00 pm – 2:20 pm: Panel 3 (chair and respondent: Jeremy Schneider)
  • Alex Purves (UCLA): Earth Time
  • Chad Córdova (Cornell): Earth and Water: Of the Elemental Interplay in Montaigne

2:30 pm – 3:00 pm

• Travel to The Soil Factory 

3:00 pm – 6:00 pm, The Soil Factory 

• 3:00 pm: Birthed of Clay and Returned to Soil, a workshop with Taylor Rae of Raeflower Holistics REGISTER HERE
• 4:00 pm: Japanese Knotweed tea ceremony with Adam Washiyama Shulman and Miyawaki Forest planting
• 5:00 pm: Opening reception for Earthen Acts, an art exhibition curated by Anna Davidson  

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm, The Soil Factory 

• Shared evening meal  

April 25: Day 3

9:00 am – 6:30 pm, Klarman Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall  

• 9:00 am – 10:20 am: Panel 4 (chair and respondent: Carolyn Fornoff)
  • Michael Charles (Cornell): Maps, Models, and Sovereignty: Transforming Spatial Data for Place-Based Decision-Making
  • Steven Mana‘oakamai Johnson (Cornell): He aliʻi ka ʻāina, he kauā ke kanaka: Genealogical Geographies and Environmental Governance in Hawai'i
• 10:20 am – 11:00 am: Coffee
• 11:00 am – 12:20 pm: Panel 5 (chair and respondent: Stephanie Shirilan)
  • Rebecca Zorach (Northwestern): “Only the tomb for these creatures, or their cradle?”: Fossils and the Animated Earth in Early Modern Europe
  • Wenyi Qian (Toronto): Crafting Lithic Phytography in Grand Ducal Tuscany
• 12:20 pm – 1:20 pm: Lunch, History of Art Gallery (Participants only)
• 1:20 pm – 2:40 pm: Panel 6 (chair and respondent: Ana Howie)
  • Jessica Rosenberg: Earth, in Deliquescence: Emmerich, Shakespeare, Ovid
  • Kelly Presutti: The Aesthetics of Terrassement (Earth Moving) in French Ports
• 2:40 pm – 3:00 pm: Break
• 3:00 pm – 4:20 pm: Panel 7 (discussant: Verity Platt)
  • Johannes Lehmann (Cornell) and Pedro X Molina: Unearthing Soil Humus Identity with Scientific Change through Comics”
  • Christine Elfman (Ithaca College): All solid shapes dissolve in light: Photography and the Desire for Resolution
• 4:20 pm – 5:00 pm: Tea
• 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm: Staged Reading of Madeleine George’s Hurricane Diane produced by Cog Dog Theatre Troupe, a Cornell student organization
  • Meet Diane, a permaculture gardener dripping with butch charm. She's got supernatural abilities owing to her true identity - the Greek god Dionysus - and she's returned to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore earth to its natural state. Where better to begin than with four housewives in a suburban New Jersey cul-de-sac?

7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, History of Art Gallery

• Reception and Dinner (Participants only)

May 1: Day 4

5:00 pm – 10:00 pm, The Soil Factory 

• 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Earthen Acts Exhibition Closing and Piano Performance by Daniel Shulman
• 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm: Full Moon Potluck