Green World (OART-UT 1057):
Globally 6.5 million people will die prematurely this year due to air pollution. The air we breathe kills more people each year than HIV/AIDS, auto accidents, cholera, malaria, and war combined. A changing climate, loss of open spaces, deforestation, increasing consumption of fossil fuels, global shortages of drinking water, population growth, changes to the basic chemistry of our air, food, and water, along with the campaign to distrust science, are only some of the more critical problems which we are facing today and which will continue into our future.
Active denial of these issues has become the de facto cultural standard with only a fraction of the public taking action.
This course examines environmental issues through discussion, experimentation, field trips, lectures, and speaker presentations, as well as celebrating key individuals — who have helped to shape local, regional, and global environmental discussions for the better.
Our class’s challenge is to encourage artist-storytellers to focus their passion and skill into an existing environmental narrative of their choosing. Your challenge is to create a final project which you will share with the public as a method to help create meaningful, positive social change.
Green World is open to all NYU students interested in helping to improve and preserve the environment which sustains us all.
Examples of some work produced by students of Green World:
Climate Refugees:
“Inspired by the work of Garth Lenz to educate about the disastrous extraction of oil through the Alberta Tar Sands, which we viewed in class, I decided to structure my presentation around the wealth of powerful photojournalism exploring the impacts of climate change and utilize the arresting power of the visual medium. Something about the profound depth of Garth’s photography and his patient willingness to walk through the myriad of questions inevitably evoked by the images struck me as so effective, and the influence in my own presentation is clear.” — Parsa Taheripour
A POEM INSPIRED BY CLASS:
we sit around and talk
with empty faces and shallow expressions
of concern, fear, and sadness
circular speaking on powerlessness
as an excuse for our complacency
in agreement, aware,
we’ll go home
and we’ll come back again tomorrow
and do it all again
talking, feigning, concerning, speaking, excusing
powerless, complacent, aware, in agreement,
home
after many many many days
of the same
when the ending is imminent
we’ll find comfort
in how powerless, concerned, fearful, sad,
and unaware we were
and for the last time,
we’ll go home
— Marcel Werder