Amy Franceschini is an artist and designer who creates work that facilitates encounter, exchange and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the “certainties” of a given time or place where a work is situated. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between “humans” and “nature”. Her projects reveal the history and currents of contradictions related to this divide by challenging systems of exchange and the tools we use to “hunt” and “gather”. Using this as a starting point, she provides new tools for an audience to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry; not only to imagine, but also to participate in and initiate change in the places we live. In 1995, Amy founded Futurefarmers, an international group of artists, activists, researchers, farmers and architects who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political and environmental organization of space. Their design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, an artist in residence program and their research interests. Futurefarmers use various media to deconstruct systems to visualize and understand their intrinsic logics; food systems, public transportation, education. They have created temporary schools, books, bus tours, and large-scale exhibitions internationally. Amy received her BFA from San Francisco State University in Photography and her MFA from Stanford. She has taught in the visual arts graduate programs at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Stanford University and is currently faculty in the Eco-Social masters program at the Free University in Bolzano, Italy. Amy is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, a 2019 Rome Prize Fellow and has received grants from the Cultural Innovation Fund, Creative Work Fund and the Graham Foundation.
The 2021 Howland Symposium: Seeding Resistance examines the ways that seed saving is inherently cultural and place-based. Seed saving is intimate, a reciprocal act between human and plant and an expression of obligations to past and future generations, as well as non-human communities. We hope this conversation reveals the myriad networks we engage when we design with plants and to inspire latent opportunities for designing, stewarding, and living with plants.
The symposium is organized by UVA School of Architecture MLA students Hannah Brown, Priyanka Parachoor, and Katherine Rossi and is supported by the Benjamin C. Howland Endowment.
Also visit: https://howlandlecture.cargo.site/
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