Links of knowledge and empathy connect people, objects, and organisms to each other, but the fleeting, transient nature of flowing conversations and chance encounters in the corridors means that much information irretrievably disappears from our memory. Only in one place do we resist this transience tooth and nail. Only in one place do we resist the ravages of time. Visit, at your own pace, the library. Find out which books our researchers recommend as essential reference works on art and ecology, or browse through our wider range of publications on ecosystems.
An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life.
There are different kinds, but the essence of any ecosystem is the flow of energy.
When we walk the wide high corridors like blood cells working their way through veins (and clotting together in the most inconvenient places and disrupting the flow), when we hear the garden with its ancient trees rustling like lungs filtering oxygen, when we see the auditoriums and exhibition rooms and studios and offices light up like nerve cells, where inspiration and ideas flare up and extinguish again and are eagerly selected shared stolen synthesised, we cannot help but conclude that the Academy itself is also an ecosystem, a so-called "bubble of life". Each part has its own purpose but also supports the greater organism.
And the beating heart of this organism is, of course, the library - where the energy flow and all knowledge and empathy converge, where people and books and words and dreams meet and leave again, irrevocably and deeply changed. Visit the library to discover crucial resources, to sharpen your thinking, refine your insights, strengthen your research, quench your thirst for knowledge.
Ecosystems Reading Table
Coordinated by Ine Boogmans, librarian of the Academy
Our Researchers Suggest
- Vinciane Despret, Habiter en oiseau (Actes Sud, 2019)
- Johan Pas, Nature morte? Kunst, natuur & biotoop (Stichting Leefmilieu, 1995)
- Johan Pas, Nature morte? Tentoonstellingsproject rond kunst en ecologie (Cultureel Centrum Leuven, 1997)
- Johan Pas, Buiten & Binnen: Visies op en door het actuele landschap (Koninklijke Vereniging voor Natuur- en Stedenschoon, 1998)
- Stefanie Hessler, Sex ecologies (The MIT Press, 2021)
- Carolina A. Jones e.a., Symbionts : contemporary artists and the biosphere (The MIT Press, 2022)
- Documents of contemporary art: Oceans (Co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2023)
- Ila Nicole Sheren, Border Ecology : Art and Environmental Crisis at the Margins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding sweetgrass : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants (Penguin Books, 2020)
- Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, Let's become fungal! Mycelium teachings and the arts: based on conversations with indigenous keepers, artists, curators, feminists and mycologists (Valiz, 2023)
- Emma Enderby, Agnes Denes : absolutes and intermediates (The Shed, 2019)
- Anna Lovatt, Michelle Stuart : drawn from nature ( Hatje Cantz, 2013)
- Lisa Le Feuvre e.a., Nancy Holt : inside outside (Monacelli, 2022)
- Christopher Alexander, A pattern language : towns, buildings, construction (Oxford University Press, 1977)
- Philipp Dietachmair, Sensing Earth : cultural quests across a heated globe (Valiz, 2023)
- Annie Proulx, Fen, bog & swamp : a short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis (Scribner, 2023)
Discover more
Go to the Library Catalogue, enter for example the search term 'ecology', and filter on 'Campus Mutsaard'.
The Reading Table at the Library is part of ARTICULATE 2023 I ECOSYSTEMS.