Anthropocene Consequences UIC Day: Currents of a Changing World

The Freshwater Lab invites you to an upcoming event hosted in partnership with the Anthropocene Commons. Join a collective experiment in ecological science, environmental justice, artistic activism and organizing under increasingly chaotic conditions, with a focus on Chicago, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Watershed.

Water flows through soil, roots, sky — and through memory, justice and law. It carries the story of a city learning to live with climate change, carving channels through landscapes, courtrooms and theaters.

These gatherings bring together field notes from struggles where art and law meet activism, in defense of ecologies of livelihood. We walk Chicago’s green spaces, listen to water’s hidden circuits and ask: What if a tree could testify? What if law flowed like a river?

To follow these questions is to step into the currents of our time — attuning ourselves to vertical rivers, shifting lawscapes and new forms of collective imagination in the Anthropocene.

Do you think climate change is real? Do you care about the relations between art, science, politics and the natural world? Do you envision alternative ways of living in the future — while keeping a close eye on actual modes of life in the present? Would you like to meet new people who are involved with exactly these issues? Anthropocene Campuses are temporary gatherings — intense, open and provisional — where knowledge is not only shared, but created together. Rooted in place yet oriented toward planetary concerns, these multiday encounters bring a wide range of disciplines and practices into dialogue, linking local urgencies to global entanglements.

The series is free and open to the public. To register and view the full schedule of events, visit ac-chicago.org.