Alicia Escott

Alicia Escott is an interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses how we are negotiating our immediate day-to-day realities and responsibilities amid an awareness of the overarching specter of climate change, mass extinction and other Anthropocenic events. Escott's work has been exhibited widely in galleries, museums, at residencies and alternative spaces. She is a founding member of 100 Days Action, and co-founded The Bureau of Linguistical Reality.

Heidi Quante

Heidi Quante is an interdisciplinary artist working in the areas of environmental and human rights, both in personal practice and in larger participatory public artworks. Quante is a co-founder of The Bureau of Linguistical Reality and also founded the non-profit Creative Catalysts, which works to find innovative approaches to the pressing social and environmental challenges of our time though projects, workshops and strategic advice for artists and organizations.

The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a participatory artwork facilitated by artist Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante which collaborates with the public to create new words for feelings and experiences for which no words yet exist. Recognizing the climate crisis is causing new feelings and experiences that have yet to be named, the project was created with a deep focus on these and other Anthropocenic phenomena. The Bureau views the words created in this process as also serving as points of connectivity: advancing understanding, dialogue, and conversations about the greater concepts these words seek to codify.

This talk was an intimate sharing of The Bureau's findings from their decade long social art practice as well as a Word Making Field Session where Escott and Quante collaborated with participants to collectively coin a term together.

Participants were encouraged to consider in advance their personal unnamed experience(s) of our changing world as well as their unique feelings for which they wish there was a word and to bring the diversity of their linguistic backgrounds to this conversation as the Bureau creates neologisms in all languages.

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