Launch of Urban Wilds: The Ecological Evolution of Cities Speaker Series 2024-25

The Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change at York University presents Urban Wilds: The Ecological Evolution of Cities Speaker Series 2024-2025.

The Urban Wilds seminar series explores the ecological evolution of cities, focusing on wilderness as an ecological attribute that expresses freedom and possibility in urban spaces.  The series examines how cities function as ecologically dynamic and fertile terrain that produces novel assemblages. This series is delivered through online sessions.  Each session will include a panel presentation and an open discussion.  Panels combine scholars, practitioners and activists.

Session 1: Terrain Vague: A conversation with wayside ecologies researcher Karl Petschke and artist Lisa Stinner-Kun
Date and Time: Oct. 29, 1 to 3 p.m.

Messy urban landscapes are paradise for some, hell for others.  The concept of vague terrain invokes indeterminate, neglected spaces that do to fit into the logic of capital accumulation.  Often they are wastelands, abandoned urban patches, or wayside spaces.  These are where some of the most fecund and fascinating urban ecosystems exist.  While they may appear as blight to some, for others they are spaces of hope and testament to the ability of nature to heal and regenerate.

SPEAKERS

Karl Petschke is a PhD candidate in environmental studies and writes on themes of mobility, media, infrastructure and landscape. His work on wayside ecologies explores environmental history and political ecology along the margins of historic transportation corridors. Using archival and fieldwork methods to investigate road and rail verges both past and present, his research seeks to uncover alternate lines of connectivity and continuity in regional landscapes.

Lisa Stinner-Kun is an artist based in Winnipeg (Treaty 1 Territory). Her work is concerned with the photographic reconstruction of the human-built environment. She was a recent recipient of a Canadian Architect Magazine Photography Award (2020) and was short-listed for the Architzer Photography Award (2021). She teaches at Martha Street Studio and regularly at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art, where she received her BFA.

To attend and participate in the webinar, register here: yorku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YBl3DmoAStaUyd8xSpgMfw.