Michael Wang, an artist exploring ecologies and economies, will be in dialogue with Gillian Shaffer, an architect investigating the impacts of new technologies on cities and visual media, and Nick Lutsko a climate scientist working on climate change and the large-scale dynamics on Earth's atmosphere. Together, they will discuss how the intersection of their professional practices in tandem with other disciplines will be crucial in rendering a livable and just future.
Cooper Union x Climate Week 2020 is a series of lectures and events addressing our shared future through the lens of global Green New Deals, environmental racism, and community action. We aim to promote curiosity, interdisciplinary dialogue, and sustained engagement with the climate crisis.
The Cooper Climate Coalition is pleased to present a virtual series of lectures and events. *These lectures will be online only. RSVP HERE.
Michael Wang is an artist based in New York. His practice uses systems that operate at a global scale as media for art, addressing climate change, species distribution, resource allocation and the global economy. Wang's work was the subject of solo exhibitions at LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island, New York, US (curated by Swiss Institute, 2019) and at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, IT (2017), and was included in Manifesta 12 in Palermo, IT (2018) and the XX Bienal de Arquitectura y Urbanismo in Valparaíso, CL (2017). In 2017, he was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant.
Nick Lutsko is an assistant professor of Climate Science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UCSD. Nick’s research combines theory, numerical modeling and observations to: (1) understand the changing circulation of Earth’s atmosphere, and (2) study the climate system holistically in order to better predict how it will respond to rising CO2 concentrations. Nick is also interested in climate issues more broadly, including climate model development and evaluation, climate variability and climate policy. Nick holds a doctorate from Princeton University, and prior to joining Scripps worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT.
Gillian Shaffer is a founding partner of slCollective and faculty at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, where she has taught the impacts of climate change risk and new technologies on cities, space and visual media. Gillian holds a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University with a certificate in Media + Modernity, and graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from the Pratt Institute. Gillian has previously worked at architecture offices in Berlin, Tokyo, New York City, and Boston. Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale: Fundamentals (2014), the Seoul International Biennale on Architecture and Urbanism (2017), and several galleries in New York.
The Cooper Climate Coalition, an open body of students, faculty, and staff at The Cooper Union, facilitates conversations, events, and student projects within the institution that center the Climate Crisis and its intersections with races, classes, genders, sexualities, histories, economies, political structures and more.
Along with organizing Cooper Union’s Climate Week programs and events in the fall, the Climate Coalition takes responsibility for fostering interdisciplinarity throughout The Cooper Union in support of environmental action.
