Wild Mythologies is a series of discussions and screenings that hold space for emerging eco-cultural stories. The program embraces a vibrant sense of ‘wildness’ as a way to facilitate healing and nurturing responses to the environmental challenges we face today. Acknowledging the potentially overwhelming experience of living through a mass extinction, Wild Mythologies foregrounds creative approaches that invite connection, attentiveness, and hope.
In her 2020 essay Outcome Uncertain, eco-feminist Joanna Macy evokes a climate-resilient ethos that relies not on certainty, but on intention—on embracing and embodying our vulnerabilities. Speaking to this idea of uncertainty, anthropologist Anna Tsing writes:
“Precarity means not being able to plan. But it also stimulates noticing as one works with what is available. To live well with others, we need to use all our senses, even if it means feeling around in the duff.” (The Mushroom at the End of the World, 2015, p. 278)
Wild Mythologies brings together artists who are paying attention—who are, like Tsing describes, “feeling around in the duff” of climate decay. To sustain the generative uncertainty at the heart of this curatorial practice, each participating artist will pose new questions for us to consider. Each segment becomes a kind of productive disruption, deepening our awareness of our own situatedness and response-ability within the climate crisis.
Dark Meditations
This event explores the emotional landscape of climate crisis through music and moving image. Featuring a screening of Ythancastir: Atoms on the Wall and an interview with The Keeling Curve and Nastassja Simensky, the program reflects on land use, nuclear legacies, and ecological precarity. Includes excerpts from Turpentine Tree, a haunting EP that meditates on climate breakdown and resistance.
Stories of Deep Time
This event explores the long-term impacts of nuclear technologies through the lens of deep time. Featuring a screening of A Hill and a discussion with artists Veit Stratmann and Aimee Lax, it examines how we communicate radioactive danger across generations. From speculative landscapes to inherited uranium, the conversation reflects on ritual, storytelling, and the uncontainable nature of radiation.
Available May 15, 2025
New Folklore
This live discussion between artists Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler and Stephanie Deumer explores how contemporary folklore can reimagine community, value, and connection. Through myth, media, and material, both artists engage with stories that challenge dominant narratives—Meitzler through symbolic fictions rooted in power and ancestry, and Deumer through feminist critiques of value and technology.
Available June 16, 2025
Transformative Storytelling
This conversation with artists Dennis RedMoon Darkeem and Yiou Wang explores how storytelling fosters care, transformation, and expanded consciousness. From Darkeem’s Patchwork Travelers—a narrative-rich installation at Penn Station—to Wang’s lyrical film Water Always Goes Where It Wants to Go, the event highlights stories that bridge personal, ancestral, and more-than-human worlds.
Available July 15, 2025
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Jessica Holtaway is a writer, curator and academic based near Bath, UK. Her research centres around art and climate change and it aims to contribute to a culture of care. As a curator, she often works in small galleries and community spaces. Her journalistic writing explores art and social change, for example: These radical artworks force you to look in new ways. In 2023 she co-founded a research network, Art in the Nuclear Age (AiNA), a platform for artists, researchers, activists and academics to develop critical and creative discourses relating to the nuclear age. As part of AiNA, she curated an exhibition - Radiant Objects: encounters in the nuclear age, which she is now developing into a publication. In 2021, Routledge published her book ‘Worldforming and Contemporary Art’, a monograph exploring contemporary art through discussions of the writings of philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy.