Lutz Koepnick

Svalbard, Norway, a cluster of islands north of the Arctic Circle, is rich with paradox. A former international whaling base and subsequent site of extractive coal mining, Svalbard is now home to the Global Seed Vault, which stores more than one million seed duplicates to safeguard the world’s food supply. Described as a “geopolitical unicorn,” Svalbard is, at once, an open haven for artists and researchers seeking to generate new knowledge and climate interventions by learning from its landscapes, as well as a target for international meddling because of its prime access to satellite data from above and rare earth minerals below. Site of both extraction and regeneration, attracting both a spirit of collaborative inquiry and pursuits of global dominance, Svalbard’s paradoxical singularity inspired Vanderbilt faculty Jana Harper, Lutz Koepnick and Jonathan Rattner to embark on a three-week research trip in summer 2025 to witness its rapidly changing landscapes and experiment with artistic methods to address the effects of planetary overheating.   Read More

Heglar will offer a public lecture at Vanderbilt at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 20, to kick off the Vanderbilt Eco-Grief Initiative, a yearlong interdisciplinary project that will use art to illustrate the emotions evoked by living through climate change.   Read More

The podcast, Art of Interference, dives deep into the intersection of art, climate change and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Spearheaded by a team of College of Arts and Science faculty and students, the four-season podcast seeks to broaden our perspectives on climate change and our role in it by engaging with the arts. Read More