Call for Proposals: Faculty Spotlight Exhibitions at the IAS
May 29, 2025UC Santa Cruz faculty across the divisions are invited to submit a proposal for an exhibition of their artwork at the Institute...
January 24 @ 2:00 pm – 4:45 pm
On Saturday January 24th, 2026, join the IAS for a participatory walk led by artist A. Laurie Palmer, in collaboration with Cid Pearlman and Ilia Dolgov. Presented alongside Weather and the Whale, this event will start at the intersection of Delaware Avenue and Natural Bridges Drive, two blocks west of the IAS Galleries.
Water is always in contact, always touching, something – air, earth, rock, plant, fur, skin, sand – this is part of its chemistry, its solvency, and its ability for modeling deep relation. Water is both collective and molecular, moving in synchrony and composed of individual parts eager to bond with the world and with each other.
Inspired by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Bruce Lee, and the Hong Kong protestors in 2011, we will practice moving together as a body of water through this particular stretch of land, as a way to enter deep relation with its human and more-than-human histories, and to consider its potential futures in the context of human-caused climate change. We will experiment in feeling the power of fluid forms of collective action and the intimacy of thoughtful listening and observation as tools for countering the brutality and militancy of the current moment.
How might a collective experiment in moving “like water” help us to discover surprising ways to relate with a place, a social and environmental context, and a particular historical moment? As one friend said, there is nothing “like” water, but as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has so beautifully described, so much to learn from and with it.
Participants are urged to come at the beginning and to stay for the entire walk, but also welcome to join or leave at different points.
2:00 pm. Meet at Natural Bridges Road and Delaware Avenue
2:45 pm. Antonelli pond walkway entrance on Delaware
3:15 pm. Homeless Garden Project, Shaffer Road
3:45 pm. Parking lot at entrance to Coastal Campus
4:15 pm Younger Lagoon overlook
4:30 pm Beach at Younger Lagoon
You are invited to bring a stone to carry with you to return to the sea.
This walk will be fully accessible except for one short unpaved section at the east end of Antonelli Pond for which we will provide an alternate paved route. At the end of the walk, a technically accessible, but possibly slippery, trail (depending on the weather) meanders down hill to the beach at Younger Lagoon. Participants are welcome to stay at the Lagoon overlook, or go down to the water’s level in the company of a guide.
A. Laurie Palmer is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her place-based, research-oriented artworks
take form as sculpture, public projects, and artist books, and she collaborates on strategic actions
that employ imagination and art in the context of social and environmental justice. Her most
recent book, The Lichen Museum (2023) explores lichens’ role as an anti-capitalist companion
and climate change survivor. She taught in the Sculpture Department at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago for 20 years, and 10 years in the Art Department at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, where she helped her colleagues build the Environmental Art and Social
Practice MFA program.
Cid Pearlman is a choreographer working in the field of visual art and contemporary performance. For many years Pearlman presented her work primarily in theaters, including ODC Theater, Joyce SoHo, Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Estonia), the Getty Center, Stockholm City Hall, Theatre Artaud and the Museum of Contemporary Art/San Diego. Her recent projects are more likely to take place outside, or in galleries and public art spaces, as a way to directly address issues of access, community, audience experience. Inspired by the resilience, fragility, and resourcefulness of the human body, Pearlman makes dances about how we negotiate being together in a complex world. Among other honors she is the recipient of the 2021 Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Award from the US Department of State, and has been twice awarded a Djerassi Resident Artist Fellowship.
Ilia Dolgov is a plant-grower, artist, and writer. Born in 1984 in Voronezh, Russia, he left the country in 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and now lives in Santa Cruz, California, on the unceded land of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe.
Ilia holds a Master of Fine Art degree in Environmental Art and Social Practice from University of California Santa Cruz, a B.A. and M.A. in Psychology from Voronezh State University, and a New Artistic Strategies certificate from the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art.
This event is presented as part of An Aesthetics of Resilience, a collaborative research initiative of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Friedlaender Lab at UC Santa Cruz. The project brings scientists, artists, humanists, and activists together to examine multiple experiences of vulnerability in the face of climate change and is supported by a University of California Office of the President California Climate Action Seed Grant, with additional support from the Coha Nowark Art + Science Fund.
Free
