Ravi Agarwal and Host Michael Lerner

Ravi has an inter-disciplinary practice as a photographer/ artist, environmental campaigner, writer, and curator. Bridging the divide between art and activism, he addresses the entangled questions of nature and its futures using photography, video, text, and installation. His work ranges from the long documentary to the conceptual and performative. He has regularly published photobooks and diaries (Ambient Seas, 2016, Extinct? – 2009, Have you seen the flowers on the river- 2007, Immersion. Emergence – 2006). The book Down and Out, – OUP 2002, was a first major photographic work on migrant labour in India. His latest book, Multispecies Speculations and Growing Lexicon, is part of his multispecies art project “Samtal Jameen, Samtal Jameer,” supported by the Prince Claus Foundation. Find out more on his website.

Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).