Environmental Futures

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!What might environmental research look like if we learned to work at the speed of trust? In this episode, host Melody Allison talks with artists Joe Riley and Audrey Snyder about Passengers of Change, their collaborative exploration of Undaria pinnatifida, or wakame, in San Diego. Moving between studio, laboratory, archive, and ocean, their work brings art and science into conversation while questioning familiar stories about invasive species, belonging, and ecological change.At the heart of their practice is a deceptively simple mantra: “Include, involve, expand.” Riley and Snyder reflect on microscopic life, creating the Ballast Bench laboratory, and the patience, reciprocity, and trust necessary for meaningful collaboration. Their work invites us to move between panorama and detail, asking not only what we see when we look closely at environmental change, but how we might learn to see, research, and respond together.ReferencesProject website: https://www.passengersofchange.com/benchBrown, Adrienne M. 2017. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press.Hersey, Tricia. 2022. Rest Is Resistance : A Manifesto. First edition. Little, Brown Spark.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!How do we learn to care for creatures we may never meet, in places we may never go? UO environmental humanities scholar Stacy Alaimo joins host Melody Allison to journey into the deep sea through her new book, The Abyss Stares Back, and to consider the creatures, images, and ethical questions we encounter there. Their conversation moves between wonder and violence, intimacy and estrangement, asking what happens when cameras, science, film, and art bring distant ocean lives close to us.From posthumanism to scientific capture, microplastics, and deep-sea mining, Alaimo asks what kinds of relationships are possible across enormous distances and differences. Can beauty and wonder move us toward care without turning other creatures into objects for human consumption? And what might happen if, rather than conquering the depths, we allowed ourselves to be unsettled by what looks back?Episode ReferencesBlue Peril. 2022. Film. Deep Sea Mining Campaign (DSMC), 2022. https://dsm-campaign.org/blue-peril/.Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity.Covarrubias, Miguel, Plate 1. With four jars of fanciful specimens in the background, a piscine-looking Beebe bends over to salt and fry a cheerful fish. Miguel Covarrubias, “Professor William Beebe,” in No. 2 of the Private Lives of the Great series, Vanity Fair, November 1933, 29. Library of Congress Control Number 2016680404. Image courtesy of Marina Elena Rico Covarrubias.Earle, Sylvia. 1996. Sea Change. New York: Ballantine.Haraway, Donna. 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm.Majuli, Katrina. 2024. Managing Life's Future: Species Essentialism and Evolutionary Normativity in Conservation Policy, Practice, and Imaginaries. University of Oregon. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/items/4d065eb3-efa5-4db6-a211-ec64ded2940dMeg 2: The Trench. 2023. Directed by Ben Wheatley. CMC Pictures.Oreskes, Naomi. 2014. “Scaling Up Our Vision.” Isis 105, no. 2.Sehgal, Melanie. 2018. “Aesthetic Concerns, Philosophical Fabulations: The Importance of a ‘New Aesthetic Paradigm.’” Substance 47, no. 1Widder, Edith. 2021. Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea. New York: Random House.Widder, Edith. 2016 “The Fine Art of Exploration.” Oceanography 29, no. 4.Wolfe, Cary. 2010. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.