Forum for Radical Imagination on Environmental Cultures
A program of The Nature of Cities, FRIEC is a platform for nurturing humanity’s sacred cultural relationships with urban nature. We produce place-based storytelling (essays, poetry, books, and films), and events (exhibitions, residencies, and transdiciplinary events) that inspire direct ecological actions in local landscapes.
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” — Max Planck As a graduate student, I was often assigned to read the foundational work of pioneering ecologists such as […]
“Urban nature and public art can help to break down barriers both mental and physical, sparking imaginations, catalyzing place making, forging new connections, and bringing people together.” Mankind may have left the savannah some million years ago, but the savannah never quite left us. It makes sense that since we co-evolved with nature, our need […]
“Call and response as a means of dialogue: Physical interventions call out some aspect of the natural systems and infrastructure and, through community engagement activities, the people of Milwaukee respond to and activate the sites.” As an artist, having the opportunity to develop a project at the scale of a city has been a remarkable […]
“Artists bring into focus the complexity of our current situation and, in the complexity, there is beauty and potential in uncovering new pathways forward.” The world’s ecosystems are rapidly changing, and urban natural areas are often the first to exhibit these changes. The urban heat island effect and increased air, water, and soil pollution are […]
A review of Tim Ingold‘s lecture event “The Sustainability of Everything” at the Centre for Human Ecology, Pearce Institute, Glasgow, Scotland Sustainability is an overused word. It is much diminished by its occurrence in too many documents purporting to suggest that transport, local government or this tea or those coffee beans are “sustainable”. Grant applications […]
Cities around the world are using the arts to enhance urban aesthetic experiences and motivate innovative environmental activism. Manifesting as flash mobs, immersive street theater, bike parades, pop-up installations, zero-carbon concerts, and participatory storytelling, artists are using their creativity and ingenuity to draw attention to and propose solutions for the environmental challenges of the 21st […]