OIKOS. A Cultural Analysis of Care and Crisis in the 21st Century

This project investigates the nexus of care crisis and environmental crisis. Through an analysis of contemporary aesthetic practices, we wish to explore the relation between, on the one hand, the changes of the everyday care practices through which we maintain and reproduce life and, on the other, the changes to the biosphere.

The climate is changing. As a result, human life and how we take care of each other and of our world is also changing. The environmental crisis can, consequently, be understood a crisis of care. OIKOS. A Cultural Analysis of Care and Crisis in the 21st Century will investigate the nexus of care and crisis through a cultural analysis of works of literature, visual and performance art. We thus ask: How do these artworks represent practices of care in the shadow of the planetary predicament? And how do they bring to light our tacit understandings of the meaning and scope of these practices? By focusing on the care practices of parenting, maintaining, and regenerating, OIKOS shifts the perspective from the existence of a warming planet to human existence on it.