Edward Christie

PhD supervisors: Professor Robert Mills (History of Art) and Professor Mark Maslin (Geography)
Working title for PhD: 'Beyond Eco Art: Mobilising Post-War (Anti-)Modern Art History Against the Climate Crisis'

Through my doctoral project, I am working to reform post-war modern art history in the light of critical discourse on the environment, which has proliferated in recent years with the wide acceptance of the Anthropocene thesis and the popularisation of climate activism. Fundamentally, I ask the following question: ‘What would it mean to interrogate post-war modern art history through the prism of a contemporary environmentalist perspective?’. My answers centre on the conviction that art history essentially involves the critical analysis and transformation of the conditions of subjectivity as expressly manifested in artworks, and that an environmentalist approach to the discipline could therefore point towards fundamental and holistic means of responding to the climate crisis. To fulfil this potential, I advocate anti-modern art history: the rejection of the discipline’s multitudinous, entrenched ties to the modern system, and the prioritisation of socio-environmental ethical praxis within the subject.

Research interests

Environmentalism and political ecology; the political agency of art history; radical philosophy; post-war modern art; anachronism; interdisciplinary collaborations between the arts and sciences.

Publications

Maurice Biriotti, Mathilde Bru, Edward Christie, Helena Fallstrom, Nicola Miller, Stephanie Ng, and Joel Stokes, "The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Contributions from the Humanities: A Research Report", UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/sites/institute_of_advanced_studies/files/the_un_sustainable_development_goals_220207.pdf.
"Reflections on Cultural Ecology," UCL Anthropocene, June 3, 2021.
“Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas,” Object 22, December 3, 2020.
“Art and the Climate Crisis,” Burlington Contemporary, January 2, 2020.
“Art History in the Anthropocene,” Anthroposphere: The Oxford Climate Review, June 11, 2019.

Conference papers, presentations, and guest lectures:

"Ecofeminism and Queer Ecologies", Art in the Anthropocene, Yale University, 29 October, 2021.
"Introduction to Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares' Forest Law", Latin American Eco Cinema, UCL, 21 September, 2021.
"Beyond Eco Art: Towards an Art History of the Anthropocene", Contemporary Art in the Anthropocene, University of Amsterdam, 21 September, 2021.
"Rasheed Araeen's 'Ecoaesthetics'", Environment, Ecology, Sustainability, The Slade School of Fine Art, March 26, 2021.
"Towards an Eco-Logical Ontology: Mobilising Agnes Denes’s Pyramid Series Against the Climate Crisis”, Art History in Climate Change, The Courtauld Institute of Art, June 26, 2020.

Media appearances/outreach work

Cultural Ecology: Galvanising Climate Action Across the Arts, Seminar Host.

Based at UCL Anthropocene, the Cultural Ecology seminar programme united activist-academics working across the arts to interrogate the following question: ‘How might cultural researchers galvanise more urgent and effective responses to the climate crisis to remedy the severe inadequacy of the actions currently being set into motion by governments and corporations?’

UCL Anthropocene, Project Coordinator.

UCL Anthropocene works as a virtual school by assembling projects, people, courses, and events from across the social sciences, arts, humanities, life, environmental, and health sciences to articulate and address the problems that the Anthropocene poses for our collective future.
Among events organised for the initiative, on Tuesday 17th November 2020 I hosted a forum on ‘Contemporary Art in the Anthropocene’.

Environment Domain Early-career Network (EDEN), Co-chair.

The Environment Domain Early Career Network (EDEN) provides support to researchers in the early stages of their career in environmental research at UCL.
Through my work with EDEN I have been promoting interdisciplinary discourse on environmental issues between early-career UCL academics from arts and sciences backgrounds.

Reforming Anatomy, Co-founder.

Reforming Anatomy is a research network focused on examining the human body through the lenses of contemporary art and medicine.
After the pandemic, we will resume our series of conferences for The Royal Society of Medicine to explore the question of ‘What is Health?’ – considering its mental, social, and environmental dimensions; and critically weaving together how it is defined by medical professionals and artists, in order to reach a synthesised and more objective understanding of wellbeing.

Past Imperfect Seminar, Steering Group Member.

Past Imperfect is a visual culture seminar based in the History of Art Department at UCL. We share concerns with the past and its place in the present, a present increasingly overinvested in the value of the contemporary.
I took a leading role in developing last year’s programme, which was centred on the theme of ‘Activation’. Among events, I helped to organise a series of short talks on the relationship between art and protest movements, for which I gave a presentation on how contemporary documentary artists are responding to extractivist crimes in Latin America.
I am currently co-hosting a series of seminars titled 'Conversations on Ecological Form' with Dr. Nicholas Robbins. Each event is structured by a different prompt (Periodisation, Collaboration, and Action), which acts as a lens to consider different ways in which we might think about form ecologically: how forms change over time or may come unfixed from their historical moment when considered ecologically; how forms emerge from complex relationships between different makers and agents; and lastly how forms work in the world, and how we might reimagine the agency of art and art history in this moment.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Contributions from the Humanities

This collaborative project challenged the lack of represention of perspectives from Humanities disciplines in work on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our research resulted in the creation of an app which facilitates discussion on the value of the Humanities to SDGs thinking, as well as the publication of a short report which was released online by UCL's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS).
The initative was ran collaboratively by the IAS and SHM, a consultancy firm which specialises in applying insights from the Humanities to solving problems for businesses, public policy-makers, and NGOs.

Teaching

Postgraduate Teaching Assistant. HART0021: Modern & Contemporary Art in London. January—April 2021 [forthcoming].
- This course will examine the significance of art in the so-called ‘Anthropocene’—our geological epoch which is defined by modern humans’ profound disturbance of the Earth’s planetary conditions. We will critically explore how artists since the late eighteenth century have both contributed to the worsening of the climate crisis by fortifying modern ideology and subverted dominant politics to promote social and environmental justice. Underpinning these analyses will be a discussion of how approaches to the arts—including art practice, curation, and history—might be transformed to more meaningfully contribute to the climate movement, whether that be through policymaking or activism. The seminars will take place at iconic London institutions including Kew Gardens, the Courtauld Gallery, and Tate Modern; and each session will focus on an important artist such as Marianne North, William Morris, and Rasheed Araeen.
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant. Undergraduate Dissertation Coordinator. September 2019—July 2020.

Awards

My PhD is fully funded by one of UCL’s Graduate Research Scholarships.
In addition, my doctoral research has been supported by the following awards:
- Yale-UCL Collaborative Student Exchange Award (2021-22)
- Inoue Masaru Scholarship (2021-22)
- Departmental Travel and Conference Fund Award (2021-22)