15-20 Minute Paper
Roderick Coover
Biography
Roderick Coover is Associate Professor of Film and Media Arts and Founding Director of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Arts and Ethnographic Research at Temple University. His awards include Fulbright, Mellon, LEF, Whiting, and CAN fellowships.
Abstract
This talk considers issues arising in the use of audio-visual recordings and research gathered for the forthcoming installation works, Estuary, Toxi- City and Spaceship Philadelphia, to be featured at the Museum of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia and elsewhere. The project compares two sites: the Delaware River Estuary and nearby coastlines in New Jersey and Delaware, and the Thames Estuary and nearby coastlines of Kent, in S.E. England. The lecture considers how tropes of navigation, memory, writing and sensorial immersion expand the discourse on land and land use. Particular attention is given to how the understanding of climate change might relate to spatial practices and concepts of time. In doing so, the talk considers ways in which artistic practices and visual research methods offer complementary and contrasting forms of making sense of a significant contemporary issue.