Reworlding: The Art of Living Systems

As our ecological crisis deepens, art can provide the unique insights necessary to light our path forward. This Fall, the artists in Gray Area’s Experiential Space Research Lab have been exploring this potential of immersive art as a tool for understanding. Our call for participation, Reworlding: The Art of Living Systems, invited artists with diverse backgrounds to develop novel experiences for thinking like a living planet. Since the first meeting in August, the artists have been developing an immersive exhibition to reveal intimate entanglements amongst Earth’s living forms — and how to make the planetary personal. With the support of the Knight Foundation, Gray Area has been collaborating with Gaian Systems, a collaboration between the design studio Spherical and literature and science scholar Bruce Clarke, the 2018–2019 Blumberg/NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. This post introduces the broader context of these explorations in Earth Systems Science for