AIAR Speaker Series - DR. Hai Ren, Professor of East Asian Studies

Please join us for our first AIAR Speaker Series event of the Fall semester on Friday, October 17^th at the Slonaker House Living Room beginning at 10:00-11:00am. Snacks and light refreshments will be served. Slonaker House is located at 1027 E. 2^nd Street.

 

Dr. Hai Ren, Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona will present, “Mandala in Action: Cosmopublic Art Practices in the More-Than-Asian Anthropocene”. 

 

This talk discusses recent ecological art practices in “the headwaters of the three rivers” (sanjiangyuan) on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which encompasses the Yangtze, the Yellow, and the Mekong rivers, major bodies of water in East and Southeast Asias. Based on both ethnographic fieldwork and visual analysis, this presentation specifically examines the ways in which how the classic Buddhist art form, mandala (an expressive order of the Cakravāla or cosmology), is incorporated into practices of contemporary arts that address both local ecological problems and cognitive issues in environmental knowledge production.

 

We look forward to seeing you there!