Erin Cooney

Erin Cooney is an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies and has a background in philosophy, French studies, graphic design, and media arts. Professor Cooney teaches experimental humanities courses focusing on ecological crisis, biodiversity collapse, environmental injustice, food studies, colonial history, media studies, and ecological arts and design. Before joining ELTS, Erin taught food justice courses in the Environmental Studies Program at Rice University, and developed and taught courses on media studies, ecological arts and justice, and visual communication as a lecturer in UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. From 2020-2022, Erin served as Associate Director of UCLA’s Counterforce Lab, a transdisciplinary studio that harnesses the power of art and design to engage with the reality of global ecological crisis and its ties to environmental injustice.

Erin is a multimedia artist working in video installation, performance, and community-based practices. Her current project, Aire Libre, is a dance-based video installation that examines air pollution in Los Angeles County and its disproportionate effects on lower-income communities of color living amidst the heavy industry and infrastructure that underpin our capitalist, fossil-fuel-based economy. Erin is producing Aire Libre in collaboration with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Company, and LA-based poet Rocío Carlos. The footage captures a spectrum of settings, from ports, freeways, and rail yards to warehouse districts, refineries, and oil derricks, alongside parks and residential neighborhoods embedded within these infrastructures of commerce and production. The Aire Libre video installation will be projected onto diverse industrial sites within the community, aiming to shine a light on the producers of harm, while reclaiming and reoccupying these sites of extraction and oppression with the vibrant bodies of dancers and faces of community members.