During the fall 2015 semester, the Global Café collaborated with the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery’s international exhibition and film festival, “Water, Water, Everywhere: Paean to Vanishing Resource.” This media-art exhibition invited critical dialogues relating to water preservation and protection. The Global Cafe faculty learning community integrated this theme into their courses, highlighting topics relating to environmental and/or socio-political aspects of water. Avery Point faculty from all disciplines were invited to integrate topics relating to water as a resource in crisis. The goal of this initiative was to integrate course content for student learning, bridge disciplinary perspectives, and deepen students’ critical engagement with topics affecting our local and global communities.
http://www.averypointarts.uconn.edu/exhibitions.html
Fall 2015 Global Cafe Events:
The Global Cafe Faculty Learning Community will hold its first meeting Thursday, Sept. 3rd at 12:30pm in ACD 109. All faculty are welcome to participate in discussions relating to the semester’s theme, upcoming film screenings, and prospective lunchtime panels.
FILM FESTIVAL I, Thursday, Sept. 24, 12:30-1:30pm, Water, Water, Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource Avery Point Auditorium
The total running time for these five short films is approximately one hour:
Climate Change: An Intimate Portrait By Jessica Plumb
Excerpt from Water on the Table By Liz Marshall
A Colossal Fracking Mess By Jacques del Conte
Carbon for Water By Evan Abramson and Carmen Elsa Lopez
Good Water Neighbors By Friends of the Earth Middle East
FILM FESTIVAL II, Wednesday, Oct. 14th, 12:30-1:30pm, Water, Water, Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource, Avery Point Auditorium
The total running time for these five short films is approximately one hour:
Book of Drought: A Water Memory By Basia Irland
Shifting By Michel Varisco
Big Trash By Monika Hapsari
A Gathering of Waters: Rio Grande Source To Sea By Basia Irland
A River Runs Through Us By International Rivers-Oxfam
For more information, contact Nancy Parent, nancy.parent@uconn.edu
GLOBAL CAFE LUNCHTIME DISCUSSIONS
An Interdisciplinary Student Presentation & Discussion
“Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”
Thursday, November 5th
Student Center Glass Room
12:30-1:15pm
Undergraduate Engineering student, Melissa Rayment, and Biology student, Enita Liang will examine water as a resource in crisis. Come and support these students as they engage the audience in critical dialogue about global water problems and potential solutions leading to action.
An Interdisciplinary Faculty Panel & Discussion
Tuesday, November 17th
Student Center Glass Room
12:30-1:30pm
Join us for an engaging panel discussion as we uncover intersections of artistic and scientific explorations of water.
Diane Barcelo, Artist and Art Appreciation Instructor
Diane Barcelo uses water in her work for its sensuous physical properties, and finds its viscous transparency a lovely medium for the dreamy sensation of memory and communication. Water, she states, is a mysterious and transformative force, ripe with metaphor and contradiction.
Heidi Dierssen, Marine Scientist
Observing the 4-dimensions of the world oceans
Satellites have revolutionized our perspective of the fluid ocean and allowed us to see patterns and processes beyond our wildest imaginations. As sensor technology improves, so does our understanding of how the oceans vast ecosystems teaming with phytoplankton are the foundations of marine ecosystems, contribute to global cycling of oxygen and carbon, and impact climate processes. The latest high resolution sensor put in orbit (Sentinel 2A) captured this detailed image of an algal bloom in the Baltic Sea on 7 August 2015 with a ship heading into the proverbial “eye” of the algal storm.
David Madacsi, Artist and Physicist
For the recent AvS Gallery exhibition, “Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource,” one of the pieces Emeritus Professor, David Madacsi submitted was a black & white photographic portrait titled “Dessica.” This photograph has not been Photo-Shopped, but is an example of what he refers to as “image-gathering.” The scene was carefully staged and photographed during a workshop in Alexandria, Egypt in 2007, and was the basis for a short (three-minute) video with the same title. He will tell the story behind this photograph and show that short video.
