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Xuan Liu and Natasha Breu recorded a class project at Thornden Park on March 27. In the recorded performance, Liu wore a blindfold as she touched a tree with her left hand and drew what she felt on Breu’s arm. As Liu drew the tree, Breu whispered, almost talking to the tree.

The performance created an intimate connection between the two of them and the tree, Liu said.

“The performance actually got me very emotional,” Liu said. “It’s been a long time since I physically get in contact with others because of the pandemic. I can feel the connection and the dynamic going on in between Natasha, the tree, and myself, which was really powerful.”

The project is a part of Syracuse University professor Ed Morris’ class, “Art & Ecology: The Climate Crisis.” The class’ work will be exhibited in SU’s Schine Student Center and the Everson Museum of Art beginning May 9. Light Work’s Urban Video Project partnered with the course for the exhibit in the Everson Museum.

The course is a part of the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Canary Lab, which creates art focused around ecology, and it emphasizes the poetic and provocative aspects of art.

With the course, Morris strives to communicate the climate crisis by breaking it down. The class wants to use and create media that will help make the climate crisis more felt, present and tangible for audiences.

“The work we do in class is all about how to metabolize all the information and urgency of the climate crisis through artwork,” Morris said. “And that work in turn gives others who see it something to metabolize.”

Liu wanted to create art that made ideas tangible. “Iceberg Project” combines meditation with physical contact to meet Liu’s intention. Courtesy of Ed Morris

Morris said that the mission of the Canary Lab is to foster ecological consciousness and a feeling of correctness or rationality. As he extends the mission to the classroom, he has valued the philosophy of thinker Marshall Ganz: urgency, anger, hope, solidarity and the feeling that someone can make a difference are essential to any social movement.

“Art that addresses climate, or even on a more basic level connects to place or encourages to treasure life, has the capacity to also produce these specific catalyzing emotions for social movements,” Morris said.

As a graduate student in the Goldring Arts Journalism and Communications program at SU, Breu has enjoyed having the freedom to be creative and learn about the link between climate change and art. It’s what led her to the course, she said.

In her collaboration with Liu, Breu did spoken-word poetry on the spot, so she didn’t have to create or prepare much. It allowed for an unique type of creativity, Breu said.

“Everything is pretty poetic,” Breu said. “It just offers my own perspective and how I perceive the climate crisis in relation to the present and future.”

Breu and other students are working on projects that challenge the traditional idea of art, Morris said. He views art as something that is intentional in the way that it sparks emotions and responses. The success of a project in this class will be determined by the audience, through peer review.

For Liu, success began at the beginning of the course. As she considered possibilities for projects, she placed the most stake in the proposal process. But it was one of the most difficult steps because not every aspect of her projects, specifically the performance with Breu, could be fully rehearsed. Regardless, Liu wanted to create a space where art happens — where ideas could be tangible.

Ed Morris’ class emphasizes the poetic and provocative aspects of art rather than the informational, quantitative and rhetorical aspects. Courtesy of Ed Morris

“By engaging with a live performance, you are physically there at the precise moment when art is happening,” Liu said. “You feel things that are strong but hard to describe with words, and that’s when something begins to change inside of you.”

These feelings came to life for Liu as she worked on her “Iceberg Project,” an assignment for the class. In the project, Liu focused on the daily meditation she did personally and used it as the centerpiece throughout. The recorded performance shows Liu reading a book about daily meditation — “Hugging Meditation” by Thich Nhat Hanh — aloud to classmate Yizhe Ye under a plastic cover.

As she read the book, its message lingered.

“It stuck with me and made me think about time and relationship,” Liu said. “I want my audiences to be able to have that experience as well.”

Published on April 14, 2021 at 11:54 pm

gfpagano@syr.edu