More-than-human humanities research group!

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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

AI-artist: You are WANTED!

We are reaching out to you as an artist who creates inspiring work involving AI, and would like to invite you to participate in an interview study. It would mean the world to us in this WASP-HS research project AI and the Artistic Imaginary!

Our research team at KTH (and LiU) is working on a project that investigates sustainability and ethics of Creative-AI. Our goal is to understand how creative practitioners are using AI technologies in their work processes, and to reflect on this from sustainability and ethics perspectives. Our interviews are expected to inform Creative-AI practitioners (artists as well as engineers) working in the field. 

In the future, we plan to expand this to other forms of collaborations (workshops, design and development of Creative-AI systems, etc.) with interested artists.

Some basic information about the interviews:

  • Interview takes approximately 1 hour and will be conducted at an agreed-upon time (flexible) on Zoom. 
  • Research is anonymized/pseudonymized and your data will be treated according to GDPR guidelines
  • The interview will be recorded (audio, video) for internal analysis purposes
  • Transcriptions and other anonymized material will be shared for non-commercial purposes only

We can provide a voucher as a gesture of gratitude for your time and effort.  

Please let us know if you would be interested in participating in our study, and do not hesitate to ask for further information. Don’t be shy – email us, Petra and Anna-Kaisa!


Wishing you a nice summer!

Kind regards,

Petra Jääskeläinen (researcher) – email: ppja@kth.se

Anna-Kaisa Kaila (researcher) – email: akkaila@kth.se

Andre Holzapfel (principal investigator)

Bob L. T. Sturm (co-principal investigator)

Cecilia Åsberg (co-principal investigator)

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Humus economicus – Launching a four-year art and research project!

We’re happy to announce that The Posthumanities Hub researcher Dr. Janna Holmstedt has received a four-year research grant from Formas, a Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development for Humus economicus: Soil Blindness and the Value of “Dirt” in Urbanized Landscapes.

This art and research project inquiries into the value and future of soil in urbanized landscapes. It seeks to draw attention to radically altered human-soil relations, the invisible work of soils, and practices of soil care in a time when soils are sealed and degraded at rapid rates.

The research team consists of Janna Holmstedt (Pi), National Historical Museums, Sweden (SHM), Christina Fredengren, SHM, Malin Lobell, artist and gardener, Jenny Lindblad, KTH, Cecilia Åsberg, LiU, and Karin Wegsjö, filmmaker and director.

Through the Humus Economicus Collaboratory we will gather artists, scientists, environmental-, urban-, gender-, and heritage scholars, and connect with a growing number of soil stewards to counteract soil blindness, decolonize conceptualizations of nature, and transform public knowledge and imaginaries of soils.

The project explores how multiple forms of inheritance and potential futures meet in the subject of soil, and what societies that strive to be sustainable could learn from it.  Soils tie together political ecologies into conflict zones where nature and culture, human and non-human cannot easily be discerned and held apart. Humus economicus intends to stay with these troubles. It also recognizes that soil is not a charismatic other, as whales for example, which manages to mobilize empathy and action. Soil is rather uncharismatic and constitutes a wider form of bio-agency. How then, to call forth embodied knowledge of, and empathy with, an environment that to a large extent is invisible, difficult to grasp, uncharismatic, and which is being altered in anthropogenic ways?

Read more at the Humus economicus website!

The World Oceans Decade starts now! Celebrating World Oceans Day, and a Sea Change with The Posthumanities Hub

Submerged sustainability at the sea edge with ocean literacy and blue humanities across art and science

The United Nations has proclaimed a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health and gather ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a common framework that will ensure ocean science can fully support countries in creating improved conditions for sustainable development of the Ocean.

Today, 8 June 2020, a start on this decade, stand out as the world oceans day! At the Posthumanities Hub we celebrate this day with a short description of our research on ocean literacy, blue and oceanic humanities, and low trophic mariculture across art and science. 

All through the extended history of Earth, the coast line has been a zone of unrest where waves and tides have forged life and land on this planet. Oceanic algae, once terraforming Earth into a breathable planet, still produces most of our oxygen. The edge of the sea remains a strange and beautiful place, as Rachel Carson remarked with all its wondrous creatures in mind (1955/1998, The Edge of the Sea). Low-trophic marine zones, with kelp and other macro-algae (seaweeds), oysters, mussels and sea urchins, provide a host of benefits to various organisms, humans included, in providing many species with sanctuary and mitigating the eutrophication of the sea. Comparing this zone to the forests, Charles Darwin (1839, Voyages) observed on the sheer “number of living creatures of all Orders whose existence intimately depends on kelp”, and warned of the insurmountable effects should it perish (Filbee-Dexter et al. 2016, Filbee-Dexter and Wernberg 2018). Today, kelp forests and mussel beds are receding with the warming waters of climate change. They seem to in fact slowly perish however nutritious and beneficial they are for many species, including humans (Aksnes et al 2017). In dire times of environmental degradation, ocean acidification, and climate change, it is about time we turn our attention and appreciation to such low-trophic creatures and to the tidal zone of mariculture, as in this postdisciplinary arts and humanities project, submerged.

Sea Change at a glance

Sea Change is a postdisciplinary knowledge and capacity-building project on the potential of coastal mariculture aiming to connect marine sciences, natural history, cultural heritage and sustainability engineering with arts and environmental humanities research. The overall goal is to deepen ecological understanding and culturally contextualize scientific insight in eco-feminist theory, posthumanities and coastal communities so to stimulate society’s cultural imagination and invite a sea change of ethical responses to the state of sea life. In order to catalyse such change, this project will examine and unlock the transformational potential of eating, socializing and thinking with low tropic sea life and mariculture initiatives.

This project is a collaboration with KTH sustainability scientists, spatial practioners Cooking Sections, and Bonniers Konsthall. It involves the following researchers from The Posthumanities Hub: Cecilia Åsberg, Caroline Elgh Klingborg, Janna Holmstedt, and Marietta Radomska, and acknowledge the edible inspiration of the Lofoten International Art Festival 2019 and its Kelp Congress.   

An edible and yummy bladderwrack from the shores of Lofoten, Norway. Photo: Cecilia Åsberg

ANNALS OF CROSSCUTS: call for abstracts 2019

Ruptured Times: Call for Films to Annals of Crosscuts 2019

CROSSCUTS: Stockholm Environmental Humanities for Film & Text welcomes submissions for Annals of Crosscuts—a new peer-reviewed publication format
for film-based research. Deadline for abstract submissions 22 May 2019.

For the full call click here: Annals of Crosscuts – call for abstracts 2019

Annals of Crosscuts - call for abstracts 2019.

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