Running February - April 2024, Living Futures Saturdays is a monthly event series featuring climate-engaged presenters from a variety of disciplines. Join us as we listen, learn, and create community and new knowledge.
Our March 2 event will feature presentations from poet Kristi Maxwell and painter James Keul, followed by community conversation and connection. Individual tickets are now available for in-person attendance at American Underground in Durham, NC, or via livestream.
PRESENTATION TOPICS
James Keul: "Resilience: Art x Climate"
Artist James Keul will be discussing the evolution of his work and its current trajectory, strategies for overcoming climate-anxiety and trauma that can stem from facing hard subjects, and optimistic insights from over twenty years of creating art related to Climate Change.
Kristi Maxwell: "Generative Absence: Extinction and Experiments in Poetic Form"
Building off Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, Kristi’s presentation will explore the lipogram—writing that excludes one or more letters—as an “art of living on a Damaged planet.” She’ll talk about the ways in which human-driven climate crisis are influencing her thinking about poetic form and read some poems from her new book Goners.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
James Keul is a fine artist, teacher, and father based in Durham, NC. James’ works can be found in many public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe. James received a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and continued his education at the Art Students League of NY. While in New York City, James spent six years working as the assistant to muralist Richard Haas. James has exhibited his work widely, including the GreenHill Center for NC Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, CAM Raleigh, Bobby Redd Project Space, Brooklyn, NYC, and Leslie Heller Workspace, NYC. His solo museum exhibition at Waterworks Visual Arts Center, in Salisbury, NC, runs from Jan. 8 through May 17, 2024. One of the paintings in this exhibition was included in the 5th National Climate Assessment, published by the US Global Change Research Program.
Kristi Maxwell is the author of eight books of poems, including Goners (Green Linden Press, 2023), winner of the Wishing Jewel Prize; My My (Saturnalia Books, 2020); Realm Sixty-four (Ahsahta Press, 2008), editor’s choice for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and finalist for the National Poetry Series; and Hush Sessions (Saturnalia, 2009), editor’s choice for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. She’s an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville. Kristi holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona.