This Campfire session explores the use of altar-making as a visual and ritual practice in environmental education. Drawing inspiration from Día de Muertos and sacred commemoration traditions, the session invites educators and scholars to consider how altars—honoring endangered species, climate-impacted places, or ecological loss—can serve as powerful tools for civic reflection and hope. A brief presentation will share examples and theoretical framing, followed by a collaborative dialogue where participants will reflect on grief, resilience, and visual storytelling in climate pedagogy. Together, we will explore how classrooms might become sacred spaces of ecological witness—where images and objects carry memory, meaning, and a call to action.
" This presentation examines the convergence of Zen koan practice and contemporary collage art, exploring how visual paradoxes can serve as contemplative and pedagogical tools. Drawing parallels between traditional verbal koans that frustrate logical thought to provoke insight, the session demonstrates how specific collage techniques—impossible juxtapositions, scale disruptions, spatial contradictions, and contextual inversions—create ""visual koans"" that bypass habitual perception patterns.
The presentation shares practical applications of these paradoxical images in educational settings, illustrating how they develop visual literacy skills that transcend analytical approaches. Through documentation of classroom exercises and student responses, the session explores how visual koans cultivate comfort with ambiguity and multiple interpretations, extending critical thinking beyond art appreciation.
Participants will engage with examples of deliberately contradictory collage works and discuss adaptation strategies for various educational contexts. The session bridges traditional Zen awakening practices with contemporary visual culture, offering theoretical frameworks and practical techniques for creating images that function as catalysts for transformative learning experiences.
How to account for what occurs, what is encountered and what happens if we continue walking beyond some commonly travelled place? The Walking Oracle, born out of the desire to provide a random and playful reading of my experience of walking as artistic research in different continents and seasons since 2021, is composed of 30 images and 30 texts that can be used to produce visual constellations, inviting those present to explore themes around body, territory, time, failure, risk and collective research. The Walking Oracle is part of the long term project El Estado de las Cos(t)as. IG: @el_estado_de_las_costas
Saturday November 1, 2025 10:15am - 11:10am MDT TBA
Can students develop visual and ethical literacy by playing a tabletop card game? The Photo Ethics Card Game challenges players to navigate real-world ethical dilemmas in photography and visual media. Through engaging scenarios and discussions, players critically analyze how images are captured, used, and shared, considering issues such as consent, manipulation, and context. The goal is to develop a deeper understanding of visual ethics while exploring different perspectives in a fun and interactive way. In the game, images are used to deepen students' understanding of shared human experiences. These images contain complex meanings and are meant to provoke profound emotional responses in the player, all while dealing with scenarios in an ethical manner. Led by game designers and researchers, this campfire session will inform attendees about the Photo Ethics Card Game while testing their usefulness in a facilitated setting.
Saturday November 1, 2025 11:30am - 12:25pm MDT TBA
A story is never simply told—it is shaped in the telling. A photograph is never simply taken—it holds onto an instant while time moves on. Oral History x Photography is a participatory methodology that integrates oral history and portrait photography, creating a dialogue between narrative and the visual in an imagetext—a space where text and image exist in constant negotiation. Drawing on a community initiative I conducted in collaboration with university students and local participants in Manta, Ecuador, we will use this campfire session to examine how Oral History x Photography operates in practice, the ethical complexities of integrating images and narratives of others, and how new meanings emerge through this process. Together, we will reflect on who—or what—ultimately decides what is seen, told, and understood.
