Eben Kirksey

Meta.Morf 2022 – Ecophilia / Dokkhuset / Conference May 21 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

MUTANT THEORY: Technophilia, Ecophilia, and Posthuman Possibilities

Eben Kirksey [US/AU]

Science fiction erupted into the historical present in 2018, when Dr. Jiankui He created the world’s first genetically modified babies with CRISPR-Cas9. The aim of the experiment was to engineer resistance to the HIV virus. Popular fiction about mutants—from the X Men and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis to more obscure sources like Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl—offers uncanny diffractions of possible posthuman futures. Biotechnologists are experimenting with a diverse array of trans-genes, that could offer us more-than-human abilities. Queer and impure hopes are driving experimental agendas forward. We are becoming other in our technophilia—beside ourselves with dissolution and glee.

A riotous diversity of new life forms are simultaneously emerging in laboratories. Experimental animals are becoming human, so that they might serve as better models of our bodies, our minds, and our selves. Genetically modified organisms are running wild, generating emergent ecological communities. As we expand the purview of our ecophilia, is there room for these rogues and mutants too?

We live in multispecies worlds that are fragile, needy of care. As we negotiate new conditions of life on a damaged planet, it is important to recognize that many of us are wounded too. We are mutants. Shared chemical exposures makes us kin with a multitude of queer and crip animals, plants, and microbes whose lives have been irrevocably altered.

Capitalism, environmental racism, militarism, and plantation systems continue to displace peoples and endangered creatures who previously enjoyed health and well being on their own lands. Life is becoming non-life on a planetary scale. We live in an era of mass extinction. New adversarial political and coalitional movements are needed, as existing approaches to politics fail to address the scale and the scope of the problems. It is time to take our biopolitical tactics to the next level. It is time to reinvigorate practices of interspecies care, while also remembering how to live, love, and fight.

Eben Kirksey
Eben Kirksey is an American anthropologist who writes about science and justice.  He is best known for his pioneering work in multispecies ethnography—an approach to studying human interactions with animals, plants, fungi, and microbes. Eben has an insatiable curiosity about nature and culture. Investigating some of the most important stories of our time—related to biotechnology, the environment, and social justice—led him to Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas. When controversy broke about the world’s first genetically modified babies, Eben spoke about ethics from the main stage of the International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong. Later, he travelled to mainland China where he learned about the queer hopes and impure desires that animated this experiment with CRISPR-Cas9.

Eben attended the University of Oxford as a British Marshall Scholar and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has taught at some of the most renowned and innovative higher education institutions, like Princeton University and Deep Springs College, in the High Sierra desert of California. He has helped curate a number of art exhibits, including The Multispecies Salon which travelled from San Francisco (2008) to New Orleans (2010), before settling in New York City. Duke University Press published his first two books—Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015)—as well as an edited collection with the findings from The Multispecies Salon (2014). The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, hosted Kirksey for the 2019-2020 academic year, where he finished his latest book: The Mutant Project.

Currently he is Associate Professor (Research) at Alfred Deakin Institute in Melbourne, Australia, where he is studying The Promise of Multispecies Justice, the chemical turn in the humanities, and the circulation of viruses in multispecies worlds.

eben-kirksey.space

Header Graphics: China’s GeneBank aims to bring endangered species back from the grave.

Jens Hauser

Meta.Morf 2022 – Ecophilia / Dokkhuset / Conference May 20 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

Towards a General Chlorophobia

Jens Hauser [DE/FR/DK]

The paradox of green is a symbolic fetish, and fetishes are difficult to grapple with. Despite the new generalized ecologization of thinking, persisting anthropocentric mindsets are continuously greenwashing greenhouse effects away. Despite its, at first sight, positive connotations of aliveness and naturalness, the term ‘green’ incrementally serves the uncritical, fetishistic desire to – only – metaphorically hyper-compensate for a systemic necropolitics that has variously taken the form of the increasing technical manipulation of living systems, ecologies, the biosphere. Greenness has become a ‘metaphor we live by’, one that in allowing us to focus on just one of its aspects keeps us from focusing on those inconsistent with that metaphor. There has been little reflection upon greenness’ migration across different knowledge cultures: Engineers uncritically brand ‘green chemistry’ or ‘green biotechnology’ as ecologically benign, while climate researchers point to the ‘greening of the earth’ itself as the alarming effect of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. ‘Green growth’ pretends to reconcile ecologically sustainable development with business models, and voluntarily alludes to ‘natural’ vegetation growth. Meanwhile, in Europe, the new green deal’s taxonomy classifies fossil gas and nuclear energy as sustainable – may black be the new green? The entanglement between symbolic green, ontological greenness and performative greening poses challenges across disciplines that provide an epistemological panorama for playful debunking.

In its inherent ambiguity between alleged naturalness and artificiality, ‘green’ urgently needs to be disentangled from terms – putatively non-technological – such as ‘life’ and ‘nature’; it even needs to be addressed as the most anthropocentric of all colors: To humans, a plant only appears green because its chlorophyll absorbs the high-energy red and blue light photons for photosynthesis, but reflects the middle spectrum, as its ‘waste’: This spectrum is useless for plant’s photosynthesis, but it corresponds precisely to the largest spectrum visible to humankind, as a result of biological evolution – green literally is our medium. Chlorophilic humans are therefore tempted to mistake vegetal chaff for vegetal green itself – a disastrous ontological misunderstanding.

Paradoxically, then, wouldn’t ecophila based on ecology’s spectrality and variety require a growing chloroscepticism, if not chlorophobia? The extension of E. O. Wilson’s concept of biophilia according to which humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with other forms of life and with nature at large does not entail ‘green’ as a mandatory synoptic analogy for nature on the whole. As recalls environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III: ‘Trees are not really green after we have learned about electromagnetic radiation and the optics of our eyes – though we all view the world that way.’

Inspired by cybernetics, systems theory and ecology, the experimental media arts are potentially well situated to unpack the ambiguity of pervasive greenness tropes and to serve as epistemic indicators. But are they able, between the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic, to destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference via practices of meaningful ‘meso-aesthetics’ linking across species, scales, and processes? Or do they face the risk to see the medium of ‘green’ as a way to avoid the ‘loss of center’, which in the past reactionary cultural theorists have been emphasizing to fight against centrifugal, eccentric and un-scaled aesthetics that challenge the ‘crown of creation’?

Jens Hauser
Jens Hauser is a Paris and Copenhagen based media studies scholar and art curator focusing on the interactions between art and technology, trans-genre and hybrid aesthetics. He is currently a Senior postdoc researcher at Medical University Vienna and a guest researcher at University of Copenhagen’s Medical Museion, following a dual post-doctoral research position at the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, and coordinates the OU\ /ERT network for Greenness Studies. He is also a distinguished affiliated faculty member of the Department of Art, Art History and Design at Michigan State University, where he co-directs the BRIDGE artist in residency program, an affiliated faculty member at the Department for Image Science at Danube University Krems, a guest lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and at the University of Innsbruck, a guest professor at the Department of Arts and Sciences of Art at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a researcher affiliated with École Polytechnique Paris-Saclay. Hauser has been the chair of the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts’ 2018 conference in Copenhagen. At the intersection of media studies, art history and epistemology, he has previously developed an aesthetic and epistemological theory of biomediality as part of his PhD at Ruhr University Bochum, and also holds a degree in science and technology journalism from Université François Rabelais in Tours. His curated exhibitions include L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), Still, Living (Perth, 2007), sk-interfaces (Liverpool, 2008/Luxembourg, 2009), the Article Biennale (Stavanger, 2008), Transbiotics (Riga 2010), Fingerprints… (Berlin, 2011/Munich/2012) Synth-ethic (Vienna, 2011), May the Horse live in me – Art Orienté objet (Ljubljana, 2011), assemble | standard | minimal (Berlin, 2015), SO3 (Belfort, 2015) WETWARE (LA, 2016), Devenir Immobile (Nantes, 2018), {un][split} (Munich, 2018), MATTER/S matter/s (Lansing, 2018), Applied Microperformativity (Vienna, 2018), UN/GREEN (Riga, 2019), OU \ / ERT (Bourges, 2019), Holobiont. Life is Other (Bregenz, 2021), and gREen: Sampling Color/Farbe Vermessen (Munich, 2021) among other co-curated exhibitions and performance projects. Hauser serves on international juries of art awards such as Ars Electronica, Transitio or Vida, as well as of several national science foundations. He is also a founding collaborator of the European culture channel ARTE since 1992, has produced numerous reportages and radio features for German and French public broadcasting services, and widely published essays in print journalism and in art books for many years.

ku-dk.academia.edu/JensHauser

Katrine Elise Pedersen

Meta.Morf 2022 – Ecophilia / Dokkhuset / Conference May 21 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

Sex Ecologies: Gender, sex, and sexuality in the context of ecology

Katrine Elise Pedersen [NO]

In her talk, Katrine Elise Pedersen will discuss the research and the process behind Sex Ecologies, a collaborative exhibition and book developed by Kunsthall Trondheim and The Seed Box, with a public program curated by RAW Material Company.

Sex Ecologies explores gender, sex, and sexuality in the context of ecology. The project is founded in the belief that environmental and social justice go hand in hand. Through a transdisciplinary approach, the exhibition critiques understandings of nature, gender, sexuality, and race that attempt to objectify and naturalize them. For example, “laws against nature” used to criminalize queer sexuality, and in many places still do. These norms are justified through evolutionary narratives exclusively permitting heterosexual reproduction. Everything that does not fit this norm is considered unhealthy, polluted, or “degenerate.” These norms have proven detrimental to humans and to the thing we call nature alike.

Sex Ecologies presents newly commissioned works by nine artists made specifically for the exhibition. The artists participated in regular online meetings to workshop their artworks with the exhibition curators and with each other. The process was accompanied by an advisory board for cross-pollination composed of researchers from disciplines like gender studies, environmental humanities, communications, and Indigenous studies. Sex Ecologies highlights the emancipatory role of pleasure and affect beyond the human in our current ecological era, where nature is far from natural. It includes the biological, the technological, the social, and the political. In Sex Ecologies, desire, eros, and care dance with flesh, worms, and spirits.

Katrine Elise Pedersen 
Katrine Elise Pedersen (1988) is an art historian and curator based in Trondheim, Norway. She earned her MA in Art History at the University of Oslo (UiO). Her art historical research has often centred on (the exclusion or inclusion of) the body in performative contexts. Pedersen is curator and producer at Kunsthall Trondheim, and was a part of the curatorial team of Sex Ecologies with Prerna Bishnoi Carl Martin Faurby, Kaja Grefslie Waagen, with Katja Aglert (The Seed Box) and Stefanie Hessler (Kunsthall Trondheim) as project leaders.

Pedersen’s curatorial practice has been oriented towards alternative realities, spiritualities, and knowledge systems as well as histories which seemingly have not been included in the main strains of official world narratives. In September 2022, she is curating a solo exhibition with Susanne M. Winterling at Kunsthall Trondheim. Recent curatorial projects include “Unweaving the binary code – Hannah Ryggen Triennale” (2022) curated together with Stefanie Hessler, ”Korakrit Arunanondchai: Songs for dying” (2021), «Who Want’s to Live Forever?» (2020) curated together with Stefanie Hessler, and «Pia Arke: Wonderland» (2019). She contributed to the catalogue of Diana Policarpo – Nets of Hyphae, published by Mousse Publishing, Galeria Municipal do Porto, and Kunsthall Trondheim (2021). Pedersen is a member of the editorial board of The Norwegian Art Year Book (2020-2023) and board member of The Norwegian Association of Curators (2021-2023).

kunsthalltrondheim.no

Header Graphics: Alberta Whittle, “C.R.E.A.M.” (2017), C-type print, 91,4 x 121,9 cm. Courtesy Alberta Whittle and Copperfield, London.

Laura Beloff

Meta.Morf 2022 – Ecophilia / Dokkhuset / Conference May 20 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

The Dark Side of Evolution; On Ticks

Laura Beloff [FI]

At the same time as humanities are calling for a reassessment of our worldview and increased affection towards non-humans, ticks have entered our land in masses with an intention for permanent residency. They crawl in the forests and commonly cause feelings of fear and loathing in humans. We perceive a tick as an intruder without a right to a home in ‘our’ shared landscape. This aspect locates a tick into a category of a stray. A stray is someone that is not where it should be, often considered homeless or not having a right to a home in their current location. Barbara Creed has investigated the term stray in reference to animals and with a focus on the relationship between human and animal (Creed, 2017). She defines a new form of stray, an anthropogenic stray, which is a result of human actions on nature.

Interestingly, Michel Serres has written about the parasite from a different perspective – according to Serres parasite is based on relations between different entities and that there is often noise in these relationships (Serres, 1982). Serres refers to biologist H. Atlan, who has argued that noise forces the system to reorganize in a way that incorporates noise as a part of the complex system. Serres sees the parasite as a key to evolution and similar understanding is also advocated by evolutionary biologists.

Scientist Tuomas Aivelo claims that humans would not have evolved to what we are today if there would not have been parasitic relations on the way. Parasites are noise that reorganizes our minds and bodies – as well as forces us to cope with old and new relations and unexpected noise in them.

Inside my apartment hangs a glass cylinder, 90 centimeters high and 30 centimeters in diameter. The glass cylinder has some earth, some dead leaves, cones and green long grass grows in full length of the cylinder. I anticipate that this provides an excellent tick habitat. Inside the glass cylinder are around 40 ticks in different sizes and stages of their life. This is an experiment to investigate the habitat and survival of ticks. But with a different perspective, one could also claim that this Tick Garden is a continuation of our display practices of animals in zoos, natural history museums, cabinets of curiosities, and in terrariums – like in this case.

The talk presents insights and learnings from artistic investigations into the world of ticks and our relation to them, as well as two works; The Tick Garden (2021) and The Tick Terrarium (2019-2020) as an output of the on-going investigation.

Acknowledgments:
This research has been partly conducted in collaboration with Kira O’Reilly under the title TickAct [Instagram #tickact]. The Tick Terrarium and The Tick Garden are made by Laura Beloff.  The podcasts, TickTalks, were produced in collaboration with Kira O’Reilly and commissioned by Bioartsociety as a part of their project Biofriction.

bioartsociety.fi/projects/biofriction/posts/tick-talks

This talk is based on two recently written papers:
Beloff L. (2022) Investigating Stray-Concept and Ticks as a Co-Species (forthcoming).
Beloff L. & Søndergaard M. (2022) Living Biotechnological Lives: Noise, Parasites, and Relational Practices (forthcoming).

Laura Beloff
Laura Beloff (Ph.D.) is an internationally acclaimed artist and researcher based in Finland. She functions in-between artistic production and academic research with a core in artistic methods. Beloff’s concept- and practice-driven research is located in the cross section of art, science and technology. The research engages with the areas such as human enhancement, biosemiotics, biological matter, artificial life, artificial intelligence, robotics, and information technology in connection to art, humans, environment and society. The specific interest in recent years is in the diminishing gap between concepts and disciplines of biology and technology. The outcome of her research manifests in exhibited art works, innovative practice-based experiments, wearable artefacts, process-based and participatory installations exploring the merger of art, technology, biology and environments – as well as in research papers, articles and invited chapters in a variety of publications and conferences.

Beloff has engaged in numerous international activities including: participation in international research and art projects, organizing committees of international conferences, editor of publications, evaluator and opponent of PhD dissertations, supervisor of PhD-projects and evaluator for international funding bodies for transdisciplinary initiatives across art, technology & science. She has been a visiting researcher in Mexico UNAM 2015, Shanghai SIVA 2017, Trento University 2018. Beloff is a frequently invited speaker on her transdisciplinary artistic practice for art and academic events. Beloff has received various art awards as well as artistic and research grants throughout the years.

Previously she has been a Full Professor at the Art Academy in Oslo 2002-06; a visiting Professor at The University of Applied Arts in Vienna 2009 and 2011; she has been a recipient of a 5-year artist grant from the Finnish State 2007-11; 2012-2019 she was Associate Professor, Head of Section 2012-2016 and Head of PhD School 2017-2019 at IT-University in Copenhagen. Currently she is Associate Professor and Head of ViCCA-program (Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art) at Aalto University’s School of Art, Design and Architecture.

aalto.fi/department-of-art/laura-beloff / realitydisfunction.org

Header Graphics: “The Tick Terrarium” by Laura Beloff.

Marius Presterud

Meta.Morf 2022 – Ecophilia / Dokkhuset / Conference May 20 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

The self-hating nature lover

Marius Presterud [NO]

What does it mean to be a lover of nature in this day and age? How has the ecologically aware had to reevaluate their position as a consequence of critique of anthropocentrism? And how do we reconceptualize environmental activism in a time when everything is environmental? In this lecture Presterud makes an appeal to replace former concepts of activism with service.

Service suggests a consolidating, non-reactionary stance. It distinguishes itself from activism through the self-inclusion in immediate, situated, complex and emerging relationships and ecologies, rather than reaching outward to change some external concept or forces in the world that we must by necessity live within. This marks a shift from anthropocentric sentiments towards a perspective of ‘becoming-with’ the forces at hand, and by doing so, has the potential to replace liberal-humanistic concepts of guilt and culpability with something more decentered.

Marius Presterud
Marius Presterud (b.1980, Drammen) is a Norwegian artist based in Berlin and Oslo. He works across a variety of media; performance, poetry, sculpture and ecoventions. He has toured Europe and been a featured poet at venues in Paris, Berlin and Istanbul, and he has performed in established galleries such as Henie Onstad Art Center, Norway, and Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany. In 2018 he was a debutant at Norway’s 131. National Art Exhibition, Høstutstillingen, and in 2021 he had his first solo exhibition abroad, at Exgirlfriend Gallery, Berlin. Common themes throughout his work are a focus on selfhood, significant otherness and societal health.

Previous to working as an artist, Presterud held positions within the field of project management, program coordinating, curatorial research, music and psychiatry. He received his psychologist licence in 2008 and went on to work in the public and private health sector for several years, before being drawn to art’s didactic and remedial potential, as well as art as a repository for non-commodifiable values. In the period 2014-2019, he worked full-time with his art- and research based practice, Oslo Apiary & Aviary, which he describes as a “Dark-ecological service provider”. He currently works as both artist and group-analytic art therapist.

Photo representing the talk by Lene Johansen.

osloapiary.com