Pool 3: Posthuman Ecologies, Form of Responding 

The seminar discusses artistic concepts and narrations that go beyond and undermine accounts of human exceptionalism. Transposing us into ecologies like moor lands, mangroves, water ways, molecular and synthetic biology, pharmaco-pornographic and surveillance ecologies art becomes necessarily inhuman in the sense of non-human – connecting to the animal, the vegetable, technological affects and geopolitical forces that surround us. Through a wide range of digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence technical extensions to human bodies, minds and landscapes are stretching the boundaries of perception and representation.
Nummer und TypMAF-MAF-Po00.19H.003 / Moduldurchführung
ModulPool 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungChristian Hübler
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 12
ECTS3 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English (unless only German speaking participants are attending the course)
LehrformPool-Seminar
ZielgruppenMFA students
Lernziele / KompetenzenThe seminar is investigating artistic practices that are intensely inhabiting specific bodies and places as means to cultivate the capacity to respond to those techno-ecologial transformations. It invites us to move out into an ecosphere of a highly distributed and interdependent non-human reality.
InhalteTransposing us into ecologies like moor lands, mangroves, water ways, into environments modified by molecular and synthetic biology, pharmaco-pornographic and surveillance strategies art becomes necessarily “non-human” in connecting to the animal, the vegetal, the technological and geological forces and affects that surround us. Through a wide range of infrastructures extensions to human bodies, minds and territories are stretching the boundaries of perception and representation. posthuman ecologies - forms of responding question the existing formulations of the (white) anthropocene as a universal discourse by attending to the reverberations of colonial violence.
The seminar is investigating artistic practices that are exploring and inhabiting specific situations and places as means to respond to pasts, presences and futures. It invites us to move into ecospheres of a highly distributed and interdependent realities:
In Between the Waves, Tejal Shah introduces us to improbable bodies that infiltrate the mangroves, its sediments, refuse, and excesses. Suspended between states of dreaming and wakefulness, these ambiguous beings hold stimulatory appendages remaining beyond mutation and beyond forces of ownership. Tabita Rezaires, Deep Down Tidal examines transoceanic networks and the political and technological effects of water as a medium of communication. By combining physical and spiritual knowledge, she develops new aspects of the history of inequality. In A Mordida, the Bite Pedro Neves Marquez highlights the artificiality of a post-natural insect: Oxitec, a British biotechnology company, has developed genetically modified mosquitos to try and fight Zika and Dengue. Sidsel Meineche Hansen is confronting with her Second Sex War Zone posthuman porn production where accelerating technologies mimic and enhance already constructed, socially conditioned, fantasies. She is addressing the female body and its concealed labour power in the high-tech gaming and porn spectacle. Jenna Sutela approaches in Orgs the question of present and future paths for life on Earth through the yellow, ‘many-headed’ slime mold: an ancient, decentralized, autonomous organism that processes data without a nervous system.

With contributions by guest artists: Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Pedro Neves Marquez, Jenna Sutela and Tejal Shah.

About the teacher:

Christian Huebler, part of the artist duo knowbotiq, has been experimenting with forms and medialities of knowledge, political representations and epistemic disobedience. In recent projects knowbotiq are investigating and enacting inhuman geographies with the focus on algorithmic governmentalities, libidinous economies and postcolonial violence. In various installations, urban inventions and performative settings knowbotiq are exploring molecular, psychotrope and derivative aesthetics. knowbotiq.net
Bibliographie / Literatur
  • Future Vocabularies, BAK, https://www.bakonline.org/long-term-project/future-vocabularies/
  • Posthuman Glossary, ed. Rosi Bradotti and Maria Hlavajova, Bloomsbury 2018
  • Dissident Futures Edited by Betti-Sue Hertz, Ceci Moss et al., Yerba Buena Center For The Arts 2014
  • The World Without Us. Narratives on the Age of Non-Human Agents, Exhibition Catalogue HMKV Dortmund
  • Jenna Sutela, Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley and Beyond (Garret Publications 2017)
  • Tabita Rezaire, Exotic trade, www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/755
  • Pedro Neves Marquez, Humanity before and after end of the world in Supercommunity, Diabolic Togetherness beyond contemporary Art, e-flux 2017
  • The Post-Human Animal, What’s behind the proliferation of animals in recent artworks? Ana Teixeiro Pinto
  • War by Any Means, Rose Gush in www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/war-any-means
Leistungsnachweis / Testatanforderung
  • Min. 80 % attendance time
  • Active participation
TermineTime: 10:00 - 18:00 o'clock

25 October
22 November
5 / 6 December
Bewertungsformbestanden / nicht bestanden
Termine (4)