The 2022 Ecopoesis workshop and gathering ‘Repairing Time’ was held in the San Francisco Presidio on April 9, 2022 and featured artist and author Jenny Odell as keynote. Following the event, Odell delivered a public talk on Thursday, April 14 at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Odell’s book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy served as the thematic catalyst for the event, challenging us to consider the relationship between climate change and our perception of different scales of time. The workshop participants produced a series of cyanotype prints that experiment with the medium’s time-based qualities as a reflection on tangible ecological change. The intent was to challenge the default “how much time is left” sensibility that characterizes much of climate discourse, and instead explore how thinking across multiple time scales might allow for deeper understandings of the crisis we currently face. Through collective acts of making, the workshop tested creative alternatives of language and imagery that can inspire solidarity.
Following the event, timed to coincide with Odell’s keynote at CCA, enlargements of cyanotypes from the workshop were printed on fabric and installed on the Ecopoesis Dome, a new traveling platform for ecological and climate discourse.
Many thanks to the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and Presidio Trust for supporting this event.