The UNM College of Fine Arts is presenting "The Potential Project," a talk by guest artist Mel Chin, for “HABITAT: Exploring Climate Change Through the Arts,” a season-long collaboration offering an array of public programs this fall.
The lecture will be hosted in partnership with 516 ARTS on Thursday, Sept. 10 at 5:30 p.m. in Keller Hall, Center for the Arts.
Chin’s talk will focus on a response to climate change through a model of sustainable economic freedom coming from a people without national status, according to the statement.
“For 40 years Saharawi nomads have lived in refugee camps in their native land under Moroccan occupation, and in Algeria, awaiting a vote for self-determination,” he said in the statement. “Forty years ago, Wallace S. Broecker first postulated ‘global warming’ due to human impact. Now this has become an internationally accepted reality. Devastating storms, decreasing polar ice and rising waters now threaten the world in an unprecedented way.”
The Potential Project envisions the first currency of the Saharawi people, utilizing their artistic expressions to guide its design, and to have its value backed by the power of the sun, Chin said.
Chin’s art is known for the broad range of approaches, including works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works that conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas, according to the press release.
