About the Project

A Curatorial Vision For Ecological Art

Building on our successful EcoFutures festival series, we are launching an interdisciplinary book and exhibition that will establish EcoFutures as a leading platform for ecological art.

This project sits at the nexus of art, science, technology, and humanity. It curates practices that engage with living systems and interspecies dynamics, using a local crisis as a lens for global inquiry. By convening scientists, anthropologists, divers, technologists, and artists, EcoFutures demonstrates how creativity and knowledge across fields can converge to address planetary change.

From Local Crisis to Global Dynamics

The project opens with a sentinel story: purple sea urchins have devoured 90% of California’s kelp forests due to warming waters and the collapse of predators. This ecological collapse exemplifies challenges that reverberate worldwide—overpopulation, imbalance, reproductive excess, collapse, adaptation, and resilience.

We use the purple sea urchin crisis as a curatorial framework: a vivid entry point into contemporary practices that address these dynamics. In doing so, EcoFutures expands from the Pacific coast outward, connecting specific disruptions to global cultural and ecological systems—highlighting the work of scientists, anthropologists, Indigenous knowledge holders, and artists.