Coyote Time Convening: Climate Futures and Infrastructural Imaginaries

Fri–Sun, Oct 23–25, 2026

As part of Counterpublic 2026: Coyote Time, this three-day convening brings together artists, writers, organizers, designers, scientists, cultural leaders, and community practitioners to explore climate as a lived reality and exhibitions as an opportunity for worldbuilding. Through conversations, performances, artist tours, workshops, and shared meals, the convening traces a path from the immediate conditions of climate disaster to the speculative and practical infrastructures needed to sustain more just futures. Taking place across Counterpublic 2026 exhibition sites, the convening invites participants to experience the exhibition connecting climate action with cultural imagination.

Building on themes of Coyote Time and Counterpublic’s ambitious climate action framework for the exhibition, the convening explores focus areas of Climate as Lived Reality, Climate Infrastructures, Worldbuilding, Embodied Knowledge, and Institutional Responsibility.

Exhibiting artists and curators premier artworks, present performances, and connect in conversation to discuss their work. To open the Convening, the curatorial ensemble grounds the weekend with a conversation on curatorial practices focused on worldbuilding. Artist Dail Chambers presents a conversation about the power of archive, story, and ecology with the launch of her artwork Arrow Radio. Multidisciplinary artist Malcolm Peacock presents a new performance-run across East St. Louis. Along the Mississippi Riverfront, audiences will experience performances by Kite and Emma McCormick Goodhart, activating the river as a site for gathering, reflection, and ecological imagination. Visitors are invited to share a communal lunch by Rirkrit Tiravanija and his team of collaborators at IISTL, participate in artist- and curator-led tours across Counterpublic’s citywide exhibition, and join conversations at the National Building Arts Center exploring how artists and curators can cultivate resilient civic and environmental infrastructures.

The convening also brings together community leaders in conversations that connect artistic practice with lived experience. Author and activist Leah Thomas, whose groundbreaking book The Intersectional Environmentalist has reshaped conversations around climate justice, delivers a keynote conversation with filmmaker and storyteller Cami Cruz Thomas and local designer and creative strategist Jayvn Solomon. Exhibition publication contributors Dr. LJ Punch and Jacqui Germain present their works through readings at the International Institute.

Counterpublic will also host a closed-door Climate Impact workshop for arts organizers with the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative and Field Forms, outlining new approaches to sustainable exhibition-making, low-carbon visitor experiences, and institutional accountability. Together, these conversations, performances, and collective experiences position Coyote Time as a living laboratory for imagining and building the cultural, ecological, and civic infrastructures needed to meet the climate crisis.