Join us February 6, 2025

58th Faculty Research Lecture

given by

Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology, co-director of UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast).

THE ADVENTURES OF FORM

Nonliving beings make worlds, and stories, through their physical form—just as living beings do.  The adventures of infrastructure as form take us beyond its designated role as service provider into feral territory, where it hooks up with all kinds of creatures, human and nonhuman, living and not, and both generous and deadly. This talk takes listeners to the town of Sorong in Indonesian Papua, where Indonesian settlers have overwhelmed and displaced Indigenous Papuans through infrastructure. Infrastructures here can be suffocating and violent as they transform the land; waste places can be gifts. The talk follows physical forms in action in building the settler city, complete with its chronic floods, disappearing plants and animals, and still remaining, if largely unrecognized, spaces of refuge.

Anna Tsing is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and sometimes also teaches at Aarhus University in Denmark.  She is co-director of UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) and a founding member of various collaborative scholarly projects, including the Feral Atlas team, Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene, and the Matsutake Worlds Research Group.  Her current research takes her to Indonesian Papua, where she is studying the feral effects of infrastructure.  Her latest co-authored book is Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature (Stanford University Press 2024). 

*This event is free and open to the public. Seating will begin at 6:00 p.m

*The lecture will be held in person and also available to view via livestream.

•Parking permits will be available for purchase for $5 in the Performing Arts lot 126, ”A” permits are required during the week until 8pm. Park Mobile options are available in this same lot. Please follow the event signage at the base of campus and a parking attendant will assist you.

Registration Link

Please note livestream is also available using the link below: 
https://vimeo.com/event/4774878