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Art NOW series presents Peter C. van Wyck and Julie Salverson
Friendship as Method: Fieldwork, Writing, Exposure
12 pm | March 18, 2019
University Recital Hall
Free admission, everyone welcome!

Peter C. van Wyck Biography
Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Concordia University’s Department of Communication Studies, Peter C. van Wyck’s work arises from his multidisciplinary training in forestry, ecological sciences, philosophy, and media studies. He has published widely on environmental themes including deep ecology and nuclear history and culture. Recent writings include The Highway of the Atom (McGill-Queen’s UP 2010); a photographic essay “An Archive of Threat” in Future Anterior (2012); chapters in Thinking with Water and Bearing Witness (both McGill-Queen’s UP 2013); “Theory in a Cold Climate,” a special volume of Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2014); “The Anthropocene’s Signature,” an essay for The Nuclear Culture Source Book (Black Dog, 2017); and “What was the Anthropocene?" for the collection Critical Topographies (forthcoming McGill-Queen’s). Current projects include experimentation with a cloud chamber to photograph radioactive decay from various forms of nuclear waste, and contaminated food from the Fukushima area; a catalogue essay for Mary Kavanaugh’s 2018 photographic exhibition Radium’s Daughters; an essay on fieldwork as method with Julie Salverson; and a monograph entitled The Angel Turns: Memos for the End of the Holocene – completing a trilogy of nuclear themed monographs.

Julie Salverson Biography
Julie Salverson’s theatre, opera and essays embrace the relationship of imagination and foolish witness to risky stories: land mines, refugees, uranium mining, Japanese War Crimes. Her book Lines of Flight, an atomic memoir (Wolsak & Wynn) follows her journey tracing uranium from the Northwest Territories to Hiroshima while unearthing the secrets of her childhood, burning out as an activist, and finding beauty in haunted places. She runs workshops for first responders and the military, practicing resiliency through the exchange and development of stories. Her most recent essay, “Shameless Acts of Foolish Witness”, is in the 2017 collection Comedy Begins with our Simplest Gestures: Levinas, Ethics and Humor (Duquesne Press). She teaches at Queen’s University in the Dan School of Drama and Music.

Image: Port Radium, 2003. Photo credit: Peter C. van Wyck.