As longstanding collaborators of Rosi Braidotti’s Posthuman Summer School, we have with The Posthumanities Hub the pleasure to advertise this summer’s upcoming version of “The Intersectional Posthumanities,” Utrecht Summer School Course by Prof. Rosi Braidotti, from August 21 to 25, 2023.
Competition for registration is high so you are advised to apply early, as places are allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Deadline for applications: June 1, 2023
Course fee for students: €750 Course fee for non-students: €1000
For full details about the course and how to apply, please see below:
Herder and horse. Photo from: https://www.fass.uliege.be/cms/c_9224594/fr/multi-sensorial-attunement-between-human-and-horse-in-mongolia-natasha-fijn
INVITATION
Le LASC (Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle) et le MEAM (Multispecies Ethnography and Artistic Methods) invitentNatasha Fijn, Director of the Mongolia Institute and ARC Future Fellow (The Australian National University) pour une présentation intitulée “Multi-sensorial Attunement between Human and Horse in Mongolia”.
Humans and horses are increasingly living settled and enclosed existences, while being used less in working roles. In the Land of the Horse, Mongolia, horses still function as a core part of the mobile pastoral herding existence. The focus here is on the use of ‘architectures of domestication’ (Anderson et al., 2017), specifically herding tools and implements as extensions of the body. The GoPro camera is employed as a research tool to explore multi-sensorial attunement. Bloodletting tools are passed on over the generations and are used to jab key points of the horse, as an important means of building immunity and preventing illness. There has been little documentation of the practice of bloodletting on horses, so within the upcoming presentation this ancient healing tradition will be described through a multi-sensory ethnographic approach. Tools used by herders could be construed as a means of control or coercion, yet in the case of the lasso pole is used with the intention of directing and guiding individual animals, or in the instance of the bloodletting knife, to assist in a horse’s overall health and wellbeing.
Quand : Le 6 octobre 2022 de 13h30 à 15h.
Lieu : local A2 dans le bâtiment B7a (Grands Amphis)
Professor Karen Barad gives a virtual talk and presention Wednesday, September 28, 2022, titled On Touching the Stranger Within—Material Wonderings/Wanderings. The talk is free to attend, and it is part of a touring art exhibition called DRIFT: art and dark matter, which is currently showing at the Justina M. Barnicke gallery at the University of Toronto.
Part of what makes this event so exciting is its cross-disciplinary nature, combining work in particle physics, philosophy, and art. Karen Barad is a professor of feminist studies, philosophy, and history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their work is highly interdisciplinary — prior to this appointment, they held a faculty position in particle physics. DRIFT itself is a cross-disciplinary exhibit. From the gallery website: “four artists of national and international stature were invited to make new work while engaging with physicists, chemists, and engineers contributing to the search for dark matter at SNOLAB’s facility in Sudbury, two kilometers below the surface of the Earth.”
Online Lecture series: Sculpture on a Burning Planet Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki
Our planet is literally burning, and our present-day Neros are certainly fiddling. Distracted by war and egotistical power struggles, our leaders do nothing to effectively slow climate change. Energy shortages caused by the war in Ukraine lead to renewed exploitation of fossil fuel reserves. Weather systems have become more extreme and destructive – and not just in the usual “hurricane belt” – Europe, China, and Northern America have all seen extreme drought and flooding again this last year. These “once in a hundred years” phenomena are now the new normal. Exploration and mining for rare-earth elements for so-called “clean energy” puts increasing pressure on pristine wilderness and indigenous people’s lands. How do artists and the art world react to these developments? The international art world itself is driven by carbon-hungry practices, in the production, presentation, and marketing of artists and artworks. In this lecture series, four renowned experts (philosophers, artists, and researchers) present hopeful possibilities for future artistic practise in this age of environmental crisis.
Photo: Mirko Nikolić
Wednesday 21 September Elisa Aaltola: Philosophy of Love and the Nonhuman World Wednesday 5 October Pia Lindman: Chill Survive Network Wednesday 26 October mirko nikolić: After Extractivism in the Semi-periphery Wednesday 16 November Maarit Mäkelä: Working with Soil
The series is presented by Professor Andy Best, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki All lectures start at 17.00 (GMT +2) and are held online using the Zoom platform. They are free and open to all. The language of presentation is English. Please remember to use the passcode to access the meeting, and keep your mic muted unless asking a question. Wednesday 21 September 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki) https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/65689597891 Passcode: 422930
Elisa Aaltola: Philosophy of Love and the Nonhuman World Discussions concerning the climate crisis often ignore nonhuman viewpoints. Yet, it is predominantly nonhuman animals, who suffer most from a warming climate, whether by undergoing agonizing deaths in forest fires, struggling due to loss of habitat or by facing species extinction. The lecture focuses on how moral love holds the potential of reminding us of other-than-human perpectives. Two philosophical definitions of love (by Plato and Iris Murdoch) will be introduced, and the role of art in evoking love toward animals will be mapped out. Can art make us fall in love with the nonhuman world? Elisa Aaltola, PhD, works as a senior researcher and adjunct professor in philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research has focused on animal philosophy and normative moral psychology. Aaltola has published 12 books on these topics, including Esseitä eläimistä (Into 2022), Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield 2018) and Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave MacMillan 2012). In 2021 she was awarded the Pro Animalia Prize for her life’s work for animals, and in 2022 she was awarded the Reformer of the Year Prize by Maailman Kuvalehti. https://www.utu.fi/en/people/elisa-aaltola https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisa_Aaltola Wednesday 5 October 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
Pia Lindman: Chill Survive Network https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/65300671383 Passcode: 024187 Chill Survive Network is a platform for mutual exchange and collaboration between researchers, curators, artists, and institutions in the North-beyond-the-global-North. We engage in human and nonhuman entanglements and the development of new strategies, tactics, methodology and language that speak to our present ecological crisis. The objective is to explore, learn, mediate, cope with the future transformations in the Arctic. The network consists of several physical and online meetings including seminars and workshops. Pia Lindman as artist and researcher works with performance art, healing-as-art, installation, microbes, architecture, painting, and sculpture. In “Nose, Ears, Eyes“ (Sao Paulo Biennale, 2016) Lindman gave treatments to members of the audience and made paintings based on the visions she saw during these treatments. As Professor of Environmental Art at Aalto University from 2013 to 2018, Lindman initiated the art/science network Chill Survive focusing on the Arctic and organised the first global Radical Relevances Conference (2018). Since 2017, Lindman is doctoral candidate at the program of Nordic Cultures and Environmental Politics at Lapland University researching her concept of the subsensorial. A result of many years of investigation into the body and its place within the cultural space, Lindman’s work now moves beyond the human body proper to multiple realms of organic and inorganic life. http://pialindman.com/ https://chillsurvive.org/ Wednesday 26 October 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki) https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/62121956520 Passcode: 813978
mirko nikolić: After Extractivism in the Semi-periphery As the climate and ecological crises escalate, the metal mining sector is attempting to position itself as a fundamental provider of materials for the “energy transition.” Never before seen quantities of minerals are projected to substitute fossil fuels in the quest for lower-carbon and cleaner energy, transport and infrastructure technologies. While possibly reducing the carbon footprint of material use, the effects of mining on water, air, human and more-than-human communities are less visible in the technocratic discourses and calculations. Well documented are mining industry’s deep relations with colonialism, imperialism and related social engineering techniques of militarisation, policing, racism and sexism. Mining as part of a larger set of strategies of large- and long-term use of “natural resources” coagulates in the logics of extractivism. The concept and discussion was born in Latin America, but has since travelled across fields and geographies to tell many histories and illuminate a multitude of alternative world-making projects. In the discussion we will explore how the evolving notions of extractivism and alternatives relate to our life, work and being. mirko nikolić (Institute for Culture & Society, Linköping University) works through text, place-based performance and organising, often in different collaborative constellations and collectives, in solidarity with climate and environmental justice efforts. Since 2015, the principal focus of activity has been tracing the impacts of “mining booms” in North and South-East Europe, and non-extractivist alternatives from below. https://minoritarianecologi.es/ https://www.hiap.fi/resident/mirko-nikolic/ https://liu.se/en/employee/mirni99 Wednesday 16 November 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki) https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/62423118318 Passcode: 576714
Maarit Mäkelä: Working with Soil Recently I spent one year in New-Zealand. Because of its volcanic nature, the place offered diverse raw materials that were suitable for ceramics making. The core of my creative practice became the natural environment and the earth samples – sand, stones, and clay – I gathered during my walks. The materials were processed further in the studio and then used as raw materials for ceramics. The lecture presents this ‘seed’ project with four interrelated projects where these practices are used in urban context. Three of the projects were conducted together with Working with soil group: first took place in Research Pavilion #3 in the context of Venice Biennale 2019; second in Design Museum Helsinki 202 0-2021; third in Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA 2021-2022. All the projects discuss the entangled relationship between human and soil from different perspective. The fourth project is ongoing research with the aim of learning how to use geopolymers to work with soil matters with the result of construction that would not need firing. Doctor of Arts Maarit Mäkelä is an Associate Professor of Practice-led Design Research at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland, where she is leading EMPIRICA research group and Contemporary Design master programme. Her own creative practice locates in the context of contemporary ceramics. She uses her own ceramics making as an embodied, slow practice through which to (re)consider the entangled relationship between human and non-human realms in the context of soil. Her current research interest lies in collaborative creative processes, especially how craft-based practices can be used for raising critical discourse around the stage of the environment. She has published and exhibited widely in international arenas. https://www.maaritmakela.com/ https://empirica.aalto.fi/traces-from-the-anthropocene
Wow, we are growing as a research group! Exciting things may be lurking ahead – and challenges for extra-ordinary academics like us. This is why we work together: to support each other and do really inventive, good quality research and edgy research training across the borders of nations, disciplines and universities. Together, apart and in various constellations with other curious research partners.
Call for our first meeting this term, dears!
A warm welcome to all you group members for our first zoom meeting this term, Thursday 1 Sep, 13:15 hrs! Group members and team on location – this is who we are whom work in the closer group. Zoom link will be sent out over email.
September 1 we launch this new fall term of 2022 with a group meeting where new postdoc researchers and visiting scholars say hello, and we meet and greet and discuss our priorities and themes for the year ahead. The Posthumanities Hub research group members commit often to the group one year at the time (with parts of their research), except of course for the PhD candidates and postdocs or more senior research staff whom have longer employment contracts – and visiting scholars who are with us for shorter periods. Together we set the living agenda for online webinars this fall, applications we do best together or for other co-written efforts of research.
Thank you for making the time and the space in your schedules and hearts for the off-road activities of The Posthumanities Hub.
