Awake/Dreaming

Abstract

Awake/Dreaming is a body of work that includes animation, poetry, papermaking, installation and this written thesis. This work explores climate consciousness by breaking emotional responses into a loose binary of the Awake (anxious, grieving, conscious of systems of harm and oppression) and Dreaming (imaginative, radical possibility) modes. Artistic research started with an exploration of invasive species as a subtle and nefarious visual marker of the climate crisis in the Mid-Atlantic region. Visual research expanded into practical intersectional climate solutions that would make a tangible difference in the average person’s life. Much of the iconography of this work traces back to the Mid-Atlantic region and Baltimore specifically, though many of the solutions depicted can and are being applied elsewhere. Poetry functions as a scaffold where art and traditional essay writing felt inadequate to wholly express an idea. My original poem “The Dreaming Manifesto” is scattered throughout the work– as narration in the animation The Dreaming World, and as isolated lines on the seed paper installation of the same name.