More-than-human humanities research group!

Category: Events Page 1 of 23

“Whose Reality? Sensation, Representation, and Poetics of ‘extended’ environments via Artistic Research”: a Summative Report

From June 1 – June 2, 2023, practitioners in environmental science, digital environmental humanities, and artistic research met for the workshop, “Whose Reality? Sensation, Representation, and Poetics of ‘extended’ environments via Artistic Research” at Kungliga Konsthögskolan in Stockholm (KKH), Sweden.  Organized by Jesse Peterson (LiU) and Benjamin Gerdes (KKH), we spent the two days discussing and reflecting upon the intersections between our respective efforts occurring through research subjects (e.g., sense, cognition, and human relations to environment and technology), methods (e.g., field work, data collection and mediation), and technologies, with special attention upon digitisation advancements in video and sound that produce “extended” realities. Such extended reality (XR) technologies—such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), 360° video and sound—are becoming more and more commonplace in artistic and scholarly methods, either as tools for data collection or as vehicles for digitized representations. Thus, discussions around the conceptualization and implementation of these tools across disciplines invites critical reflections and discussion. Within this, one particular point of emphasis concerned the possibility of developing a mutually beneficial dialogue between researchers interested in communicating about extended fieldwork and/or large data set acquisition with extra-academic audiences, on the one hand, and artistic researchers’ considerations of formal mediation and audience encounter on the other.

Spurring these discussions, we created and were led through an algorithmic composition process for immersive music at KKH’s listening room, a specially engineered space designed to dampen noise and laced with cutting edge audio equipment. We explored the sounds of the human circulatory and digestive systems and discussed the discourse around arctic “silence” as commodity, resource, and auditory politics. We also were introduced to multiple ways environmental science works to produce numbers and how these numbers come to mean in wider society, the difficulties in translating research data into artistic data, and the ways by which the environment as media aids us in understanding environmental aesthetic forms and political values. To wrap up day one, we discussed the overlaps between disciplines and how thinking through XR mediums may help to forge and develop into alternative aims that transcend scientific and artistic production.

On the second day of this workshop, we explored how virtual spaces require “dirt” for their representation of reality to become convincing and how power and narrative take shape in the relation between program and user through a VR underwater excursion as part of the annual student exhibition at KKH. Through films dealing with Svalbard—the experience of this place in bodily and formalistic ways—we discussed how imaginaries become embedded in audiovisual materials and how technologies shape the sorts of worlds they come to represent. Also, we looked at the use of plants in the offices of digital platform companies, meteorological data and its ability to represent place, and VR performances to highlight how theory, methodology, and art can challenge future visions. 

Beyond the presentations and discussions, we also engaged with XR through a guided tour of the Laurie Anderson exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and an ethnographic VR session that explored the uptake and implementation of VR for and by public audiences. We wish to thank the guides who led us in these excursions into these different realities.

As a result of this workshop, we agreed to develop these conversations through a series of informal discussions to take place in the future. If you are interested in participating, please join us by sending your information to jpeterson@ucc.ie or benjamin.gerdes@kkh.se

Acknowledgement: This workshop is the second of three workshops supported through the networking project “Extending Realities: Pioneering Visual, Acoustic and Sensory Technologies in Transdisciplinary Research” and funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS), which aims to build networks among scholars in the Nordic countries.

Resisting Toxic Climates: Gender, Colonialism, and Environment

Wed 26 – Thu 27 Jul 2023, 09:00 – 17:30

British Academy/Wellcome Trust Conferences bring together scholars and specialists from around the world to explore themes related to health and wellbeing.

Whether it’s the spectacular event of an oil spill or the scarcely perceptible pollution of micro-plastics, toxicity is central to the environmental concerns of today. To exist in the world means being vulnerable to multiple forms of toxicity. Yet, conditions of vulnerability are unequal, shaped by enduring global histories of colonialism and capitalism.

This event will highlight the toxic valences of coloniality, asking how toxicity manifests and mutates with particular regard to gender across variously situated bodies, lands and waterscapes. While we are concerned with the interrelated forms of material toxicity that threaten the wellbeing of human and more-than-human communities, we also seek to facilitate dialogue around pertinent social, political and cultural discourses of toxification. Operating at the intersections of the medical and environmental humanities, and centering feminist, queer, decolonial and Indigenous paradigms, this interdisciplinary event brings together scholars and practitioners working across disciplines and employing creative and/or critical modes of enquiry to explore these topics.

Resisting Toxic Climates will feature a series of original artworks by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and Caitlin Stobie, produced in response to the themes and setting of the event.

The programme will feature a tour of the exhibition Shipping Roots by Keg De Sousa, led by the exhibition curator Emma Nicolson.

Conference convenors

  • Dr Rebecca Macklin, University of Edinburgh
  • Dr Alexandra Campbell, University of Glasgow
  • Professor Michelle Keown, University of Edinburgh

Speakers

  • Professor Mishuana Goeman, University of Buffalo
  • Professor Savage Bear, McMaster University
  • Dr Metzli Yoalli Rodriguez, Forest Lake University
  • Dr Hannah Boast, University of Edinburgh
  • Professor Astrida Niemanis, University of British Columbia Okanagan
  • Dr Christine Okoth, Kings College London
  • Dr Treasa De Loughery, University College Dublin
  • Dr Dipali Mathur, Ulster University
  • Dr Jason Allen-Paisant, University of Manchester
  • Dr Thandi Loewenson, Royal College of Art
  • Dr Craig Santos Perez, University of Hawaii
  • Dr Alycia Pirmohamed, University of Cambridge
  • Professor Patricia Widener, Florida Atlantic University
  • Dr J.T. Roane, Rutgers University
  • Dr Caitlin Stobie, University of Leeds
  • Natasha Thembiso Ruwona

Please download the programme here

If you have any questions about this event please refer to our events FAQs or email conferences@thebritishacademy.ac.uk

Image: Carolina Caycedo, ‘Thanks For Hosting Us, We Are Healing our Broken Bodies / Gracias por hospedarnos. Estamos sanando nuestros cuerpos rotos’, 2019.1 channel HD Video 8:48 min, color and sound. With: Marina Magalhaes (Choreography), José Richard Aviles, Tatiana Zamir, Belle Alvarez, Bianca Medina, Isis Avalos, Patty Huerta, Celeste Tavares. Photographer: Bobby Gordon. Courtesy of the artist.

Linköping Pride

Linköping Pride starts this week!

Here is a link with a schedule of all the activities taking place this the week in East Sweden town of Linköping: https://linkoping.rfsl.se/verkehsam/pride/

At Linköping University (LiU), the Forum for Gender Studies and Equality are co-organizers of two lectures at Pride house/Main Library:

May 31, at 17.00-18.00 Pride House / Main Library

Minority joy: Of course, there are advantages to being LGBTQI

The lecture is part of Linköping Pride 2023 in collaboration with the Forum for Gender Studies and Equality. In the lecture, Anna Malmquist, associate professor and university lecturer at the department of psychology at Linköping University, talks about minority joy and minority peace based on an interview study with trans people. You who participate will also get to reflect on what joy or positive aspects you experience from any minority that you may identify with. Welcome!

June 1 at 18.00-19.00 Pride House / Main Library

Friction in working with trans inclusion

Toby Odland (he/they) is a PhD student at Tema Genus at Linköping University and is writing his thesis on the friction that shapes institutional change and inclusion work. He approaches experiences from practical work for institutional change with inclusion ambitions based on the case of trans inclusion in gender equality work. In their lecture, Toby will present their research project in general and give some insights into ongoing analysis work. The lecture is part of Linköping Pride 2023.

This year, LiU has a section in the Pride parade, which takes place on Saturday, June 3:

Gathering in the Garden Association at 12.00. The train departs at 13.00.

Employees, students, alumni or others who want are welcome to join!! Hope to see you somewhere during Pride!!

Contact: Charlotte Fridolfsson at Linköping University, Sweden

HAUNTED WATERS

Call for particapation

Our friends in the Design + Posthumanism Network has asked us to share this, so of course we do.

Haunted Waters: We are collecting stories, histories and material evidence from all over the world about bodies of water that are “haunted” by chemical contamination. We are now in search of people who have relationships and stories about contaminated water. We are collecting stories and also bottles with water from the contaminated sites. The bottles and the stories will be part of an archive both online and in an exhibition starting in December in Brussels.

Would you like to help us and/or have any ideas of people to invite?

ABOUT HAUNTED WATERS:

“We are collecting stories, histories and material evidence from all over the world about bodies of water that are “haunted” by chemical contamination. Contaminants are substances that due to different factors have ended up in our waters. Just like ghosts, they are invisible to the naked eye, relate to local historic events and are trapped in places where they aren’t meant to be. To learn how to live with these ghosts, first, we need to get to know them and their stories.

We are attempting to make the invisible contaminants visible, and we need your help. You are invited to join forces and become a ghost hunter! Your contribution will help us visualise the invisible ghostly contaminants that will be used in an art exhibition in Brussels in 2024.

Here is a link to a website to take part in the project: https://nonhuman-nonsense.com/hauntedwaters

We are Nonhuman Nonsense, a research-driven art and design studio, based in Berlin, https://nonhuman-nonsense.com/

Haunted Waters is a project by Nonhuman Nonsense & Caterina Cacciatori (EU JRC water quality lab), part of the art & science project NaturArchy at JRC Ispra, European Commission: https://resonances.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ghosts-anthropocene

Get in touch!

Warmly,

Linnea & Filips 

Nonhuman Nonsense

nonhuman-nonsense.com
@nonhuman_nonsense

Mineral Matterings: Encountering Minerals through design w/ Petra Lilja

Petra Lilja, 80% seminar
Mineral Matterings: Encountering Minerals through design

5th June 2023, 13:00-16:00
Room E1, Konstfack and Zoom https://konstfack-se.zoom.us/j/63693025724


Doctoral student on the KTD Programme

Discussant: Dr. Alexandra R. Toland
Date: 5th June, 13:00 – 16:00
Hybrid location: Room E1, Konstfack / Zoom https://konstfack-se.zoom.us/j/63693025724

Seminar title: Mineral Matterings: Encountering Minerals through design
This thesis problematizes an extractivist relation to matter underpinned by dualisms that separates humans from ‘nature’ and which allows for the treatment of matter as mere resource to be exploited. I suggest that critical mapping –exposing design’s invisibilities in terms of abstract and distanced sites of extraction and production– can help diagnosing and understanding this destructive kind of anthropocentrism that underpins the design field as well, and Western modernity and culture at large. Creative approaches like attentively encountering other-than-human worlds and exploring minerals as agential matter and trans-corporeal enactments, emerged in my search to understand mineral matter otherwise. These approaches were developed through two design projects: Mineral Walk and Creative Critical Clay, both situated in sites of past, present or future mineral extraction. In short, the design projects explore the complexities of the extractivist mode of existence as well as the frictions and potentials of adaptively adjusting towards more relational understandings of matter and materiality, with the aim for design practice to be part of more life-affirming systems on Earth.

Petra Lilja
Petra Lilja is an industrial designer and researcher drawing from both art and science in her work. She is affiliated researcher at The Posthumanities Hub and member of Design + Posthumanism Network, engaging with critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism via her design practice, research and teaching. She previously worked as design lecturer and program director of the Design + Change Programs at Linnaeus University. For four years she ran an eponymous galley in Malmö displaying art, design and research. She is a member of the jury of the annual Swedish Design award UNG and its equivalent in South Korea.

Dr. Alexandra R. Toland
Dr. Alexandra Toland is Associate Professor of Arts and Research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in Germany, where she directs the Ph.D. program in art and design. She earned her MFA from the Dutch Art Institute of the Netherlands and PhD in landscape planning from the Technical University of Berlin. Alex has published widely on artistic (research) practices as they relate to soil protection, air pollution and the Anthropocene, including the co-edited book, Field to Palette – Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene (Taylor and Francis, 2018). She co-chaired the German Soil Science Society’s (DBG) Commission 8 Soils in Education and Society from 2011 to 2015, having organized multiple art exhibitions and film screening events, and is currently the co-chair of the Commission on the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Soils of the International Soil Science Society.

To receive seminar materials in advance, contact Petra Lilja Petra.Lilja@konstfack.se

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