David Brooks

David Brooks

Rome Prize in Visual Arts
February 17–April 3, 2020
Profession
Artist, Brooklyn
Project title
Rome’s Future Ruins in Reverse
Project description

I will be developing a project that I refer to as livable mappings: multidimensional mapped situations that engage the flow of life itself or passage of time. With Rome’s archive of three millennia of artifacts borne of cultural ambitions, it is the prototypical case study for this work, and exists as a veritable roadmap on how to regard future climate changes. Of special concern to this work is how climate change affects our relationship to the built environment and sense of community. Italy has become one of the main routes into Europe for refugees fleeing war and social persecution, but also for severe environmental degradation in northern Africa. This is an unfolding newfound relationship between the human and nonhuman living worlds (i.e., climate change). Through an active dialogue with the city’s inhabitants, the fellows of the American Academy, and archival materials, these mappings will consider both human and nonhuman life—past, present and future—as the climate continues to change in all meanings of the word.