Center for Force Majeure Studies

The Center for Force Majeure Studies will enable artists and scientists to develop new collaborative insights, disciplines and methods to create, design and execute projects that elaborate the research and work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison.

 

The mission of the Center for Force Majeure Studies (“the Center”) is to generate long-term research projects that address the emerging stresses of the Earth’s largest ecosystems by co-joining the processes of art-making and the Sciences within the uniquely and specifically-framed perspective of work by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, understood as the Harrison Studio. The scope of mission of the Center includes work beyond typical categories and is in support of an evolving Art/Science hybrid form. A central theme is adaptation to climate change at scale, asking such questions as: Are there ecologically available responses that will, in good part, replace the constant flow of waters to river systems endangered by disappearing glaciers?

 

The Center will reach out to cultural and educational institutions and execute on-the-ground projects that will engage scientists, artists, lawmakers and the public with the urgent complexity of humanity’s essential participation in the Earth’s ecology. The Center’s work intends to enrich public discourse concerning ecology and inform policy development.