Working to center environmental consciousness in Bay Area arts organizations, Art + Climate Action recognizes the vital role artists play in tackling the climate crisis.

Increasingly, artistic research is at the heart of climate-focused material research and tactical thinking. This panel presents the work of four artists and thinkers who marshal science and technology, new forms of social practice, and justice-oriented mindsets to affect real-world change. They re-imagine our built environment and develop new methods of material production, use, and reuse, suggesting pathways to change and hope for our collective future in the process.

Moderator Matthew Harrison Tedford is an art historian, media scholar, writer, and educator. His work looks at the intersection of contemporary art and media, nature, the nonhuman, and technology. Matthew writes, Nature in the Arts, a quarterly column for Bay Nature magazine. His writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, Artsy, KQED, SF Weekly, Feminist Media Histories, Text Matters, and more. Matthew is a PhD candidate in the Visual Studies program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Art + Climate Action is a San Francisco Bay Area collective dedicated to building a sustainable art world. A+CA unites museums, galleries, non-profit arts spaces, studios, art advisors, and arts patrons to better understand our sector’s climate impacts and create the environmentally conscious arts community we need. We support education on CO2 emissions, create customized climate action plans for Bay Area arts organizations, and elevate the voices of artists and creative thinkers in the global campaign for a healthy planet.