Mrill Ingram, Research Scientist, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute / Research Fellow, Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW-Madison

5013 Vilas and on Zoom

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/98236889138

Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth (Temple University Press, 2022) offers a framework for thinking and seeing in new ways about the plethora of often ignored everyday spaces associated with our maintenance infrastructure. The book features work by artists as they venture into such spaces, occupying them to challenge conventional narratives of dismissal and to create new stories and new relationships to question hierarchies of value and to give these spaces meaning. Ingram is interested in this work as it both engages with science and technology, yet rejects functionalist narratives about the environment as “useful” and also enables people to confront what privilege makes invisible. Catalyzed by artists including Mierle Laderman Ukeles and M. Jenea Sanchez, the book offers a reflection on, and a guide for, everyday space as a portal through which we confront old stories and tell new ones about our surroundings and how we dwell on Earth. The book was chosen as a 2022 favorite book of the year by The Progressive magazine.

Environmental geographer Mrill Ingram is Research Scientist with the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and Research Fellow with the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW Madison. She has a 2013 co-authored book from MIT Press, The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks, with Raul Lejano and Helen Ingram, which builds on narrative analysis to explore the importance of story in grassroots collaborative environmental action. She is also the geographer for Madison’s BT Farms Agrihood project and serves on the board of Arts+Literature Laboratory: https://artlitlab.org/