A series of conversation with architects, artists and designers whose practices confront the current ecological emergency and propose alternative futures for our planet.

Eco-Visionaries surveys contemporary positions in art and architecture addressing environmental problems beyond mainstream notions of sustainability. This comprehensive volume is a companion to the collaborative 2018 exhibition staged by four participating European museums. Each show maintains a different focus and curatorial approach, and for each, artists investigate more sustainable approaches toward humankind's place on earth, through video and sound works, paintings and installations. While the series of exhibitions presents the works of artists and architects who offer critical reflections on pressing contemporary issues, the book unites research, essays and the artworks. Besides the historical antecedents of current ecological thinking in art and design, this catalog also promotes alternative visions for future uses of energy, resources and the environment.

The idea for Eco-Pioneers came to Steve Lerner while he was attending the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Although he was moved by the vision of sustainable development evoked by citizens and officials at the summit, as a reporter he felt a need to put a human face on the rhetoric and find out what sustainable development actually looks like in the United States. He spent the next four years searching out what he came to call "eco-pioneers"—the modern pathfinders who are working in the American pragmatic tradition to reduce the pace of environmental degradation. These practical visionaries are people who are willing to push the limits of whatever tools they can find for dealing with ecological problems. Lerner provides case studies of eco-pioneers who are exploring sustainable ways to log forests, grow food, save plant species, run cattle, build houses, clean up cities, redesign rural communities, generate power, conserve water, protect rivers and wildlife, treat hazardous waste, reuse materials, and reduce both waste and consumption. Some of those profiled run businesses, some address environmental practices within their immediate community, and some combine their environmental concerns with social goals such as the creation of inner-city jobs. Together they are creating ways of living and working that many analysts believe to be essential to an ecologically sustainable future.

Soul initiation is an essential spiritual adventure that most of the world has forgotten — or not yet discovered. Here, visionary ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin maps this journey, one that has not been previously illuminated in the contemporary Western world and yet is vital for the future of our species and our planet. Based on the experiences of thousands of people, this book provides phase-by-phase guidance for the descent to soul — the dissolution of current identity; the encounter with the mythopoetic mysteries of soul; and the metamorphosis of the ego into a cocreator of life-enhancing culture. Plotkin illustrates each phase of this riveting and sometimes hazardous odyssey with fascinating stories from many people, including those he has guided. Throughout he weaves an in-depth exploration of Carl Jung's Red Book — and an innovative framework for understanding it.

Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories unpacks the complex and crucial debates surrounding sustainable design to deliver a compelling manifesto for change, at a time of looming ecological crisis, mounting environmental legislation and limited progress. This is a book about sustainable design, by the leading sustainable design thinkers, for creative practitioners, professionals, students and academics. This challenging work provides the reader with a rich resource of future visions, critical propositions, creative ideas and design strategies for working towards a sustainable tomorrow, today.The authors boldly present alternative understandings of sustainable design, to curate a challenging, sometimes uncomfortable and always provocative, collection of essays by some of the worlds leading sustainable design thinkers. The result is an impacting and polemical anthology that reinvigorates the culture of critique that, in previous years, has empowered design with the qualities of social, environmental and economic revolution.

Jay Walljasper, Jon Spayde andThe Editors of Utne ReaderTable of Contents Acknowledgments Foreword by Eric Utne Introduction The Spirit Moving Us Introduction Thomas Berry Satish Kumar Stephen & Ondrea Levine Thich Nhat Hahn Zalman Schachter-Shalomi Starhawk The Sense of Community Introduction Ernesto Cortes Jr. Roberta Brandes Gratz Jane Jacobs Frances Moore Lappé Michael Lind David Morris Helena Norberg-Hodge John Papworth Andres Duany & Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Virginia Valentine Social Action Introduction Noam Chomsky Gary Delgado Riane Eisler Colin Greer Ted Halstead Jim Hightower bell hooks Andrew Kimbrel lWinona LaDuke Geoff Mulgan Muhammed Yunus Seeing Green Introduction Kenny Ausubel & Nina Simons Fritjof Capra Theo Colborn Edward Goldsmith Paul Hawken Hazel Henderson Jerry Mander William McDonough Bill McKibben Donella Meadows Theodore Roszak Charlene Spretnak Creativity & Culture Introduction Gloria Anzaldua Octavia Butler Eduardo Galeano George Gerbner Barbara Marx Hubbard Kalle Lasn Bobby McFerrin Bill Moyers Neil Postman Rachel Rosenthal John Ralston Saul William Strickland Body, Psyche & Senses Introduction Larry Dossey Chellis Glendenning Susan Griffin James Hillman Tom Hodgkinson Henry & Karen Kimsey-House Jane Maxwell Vicki Robin Gabrielle Roth Alice Waters

Curating in a Time of Ecological Crisis reaffirms the relevance and impactful role of art, revealing how contemporary art exhibitions can capture the zeitgeist and advance new and collaborative approaches to a more sustainable inhabitation of Earth. The book is largely focused on biennales, which it argues are the contemporary exhibition models with the greatest capacity to offer new perspectives and propose alternative ways of connecting with our social and natural environments. Felicity Fenner demonstrates this by showing how curators of these high-profile exhibitions are responding in creative and engaging ways to the issues that preoccupy artists and society more broadly, of which the ecological crisis is paramount. Drawing on case studies from different parts of the world, the author reveals how biennales can make a constructive contribution to debates and attitudes around climate change, and how the role of the curator has evolved to re-embrace a duty of care not just to art but to the natural world as well. Curating in a Time of Ecological Crisis investigates how large-scale exhibitions of contemporary international art can become agents of change. As such, the book will be essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners with an interest in exhibitions, curating, contemporary art, and environmental sustainability.