Are our minds wild enough?

What does nature mean to you? Perhaps it’s out there in the wilderness, a pristine Eden, mostly ruined by the presence of humans. Or maybe it’s a familiar and much-loved woodland, alive in the spring with birds and blooming plants. Maybe nature is like a garden, a farm or even a city street. Our ideas about nature have a profound impact on our personal actions but also on the hugely influential decisions of international policy. Sandra Díaz is one of the world’s leading environmental scientists. We are honoured that she joins us to explore better ways of imagining life on our planet. Our conversation with Sandra will be illuminated by short films from acclaimed filmmaker Vincent Moon, each of which portray the tremendous intimacy of people, landscapes and music around the globe.

Sandra Díaz

Speaker

Sandra Díaz is one of the world’s leading environmental scientists and a prominent voice in global environmental policy. Professor of ecology at the National University of Córdoba, senior principal researcher at CONICET, Argentina and a Martin School Fellow at Oxford University, Sandra is renowned for her groundbreaking research on plant functional diversity and the benefits of nature to human beings. She has won several scientific prizes, published over 200 scientific papers, many in top-tier journals, and is a member of ten prominent learned societies, including the Royal Society and the Academies of Sciences of Argentina, USA, France, and Norway.

Films by Vincent Moon

Artist

Vincent Moon is a nomadic filmmaker. For more than twenty years he has been documenting human civilisation, rural and urban landscapes, cultural ceremonies, rituals and sound experiments for his Petites Planètes Collection, which to this day includes more than 1,300 films, all published in open source. He produces and distributes films that break away from industry convention, while his improvised ‘Live Cinéma’ performances have been presented in hundreds of venues and festivals around the world, including MOMA, the Barbican (London), le Jeu de Paume (Paris), Villa Medici (Rome), and Inhotim (Brazil).

At this event we will be featuring a program of short films, specially curated and edited for us by the filmmaker, Vincent Moon.

Vincent Moon can be found on instagram at @petites___planetes and at vincentmoon.com.

Brigid Hains

Host

Brigid Hains is the editorial director of Aeon Media. An environmental historian by training, she is driven by a deep curiosity about the natural and human worlds. The Sophia Club is a chance for Brigid to express her love of beauty and the arts, and to share the heartfelt dimensions of her intellectual life.