Approximately seventy-four border walls and fences exist across the world today, up from just six in 1989. Despite the border-defying and planetary character of contemporary problems – environmental crisis, political instability, pandemics – border barriers are proliferating. New border fences have recently been erected on the eastern frontiers of the European Union, and, as they cut through the borderland woods, they turn a forest into a wall. Yet, the supposedly impermeable contemporary border regimes are incessantly interrupted and undermined by uncontainable human mobility as well as the vibrant mobilities and tresspasses of the forest matter.
Olga Cielemecka is a feminist philosopher and postdoctoral researcher in Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland. She works in feminist theory, field philosophy, and environmental humanities. She previously held a postdoctoral position at Tema Genus at Linkoping University. Her current research focuses on the environmental and societal impact of border security infrastructure in nature-protected areas.
Caroline Elgh, Ph.D. candidate at TEMA Genus, Linköping University
Join us for a unique online event focused on the intersection of ecology, environmental arts and humanities with sex-positive attitudes and strategies, including pleasure activism through ecosexuality and hydrosexuality. This special edition of The Posthumanities Hub webinar introduces new, more-than-human sexualities that challenge conventional notions of culture, arts, and sex. Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, who launched the ecosexual movement, will join us to share their ecosexy art strategies, practices, and their experience in experimental teaching. Cyber nymphs Justyna Górowska and Ewelina Jarosz will discuss the hydrosexual aspect, exploring love for brine shrimp and reimagining the Baltic Sea amid climate change. Caroline Elgh, a soaked curator and mermaid wannabe scholar, will guide us through this exciting webinar channeling love and sensuality through art and extra humanities. Brace yourself for an eco-queer extravaganza for the critical humanities.
Description of the online event:
Get ready to immerse yourself in the exciting worlds of eco- and hydrosexuality that are all about getting frisky with Earth Lover and the Blue Planet. In this special edition of The Posthumanites Hub webinar, the new, more-than-human sexualities will be introduced to challenge the traditional notions of what sex is and can be in culture and the arts, addressing planetary care and interconnectedness.
In 2008, two fabulous artists, Annie Sprinkle, and Beth Stephens, launched the ecosexual movement in the arts. They combined their unique charismas and talents in performance, to spice things up in environmental art! They’ll be joining us in this webinar, and let me tell you, they have some ecosexy toys up their sleeves. And by that, we mean the ecosexual art strategies, practices, and even the glossary that nowadays extends internationally across the art, activist, and academic worlds. With their absurdist sense of humor and years of experience in merging sex-positive with environmental, they will make your heart race!
But that’s not all! Brace yourselves for the wet and wild ride as the cyber nymphs, Justyna Górowska and Ewelina Jarosz take the stage. Working with Annie and Beth’s ideas, they’ll be introducing the hydrosexual offspring of the ecosexual movement in the arts. Get ready to hear about their love affair with the brine shrimp inhabiting the Great Salt Lake and ideas of reimagining the Baltic Sea in times of climate change. The sultry brine shrimp baby, Annie, and Beth, who are grandmothers, and Ewelina and Justyna, who are mothers, join us, casting a seductive glow upon the Blue Humanities Archive project—a fusion of digital art, eco-technologies, and feminist blue posthumanities.
A steamy presence of more-than-human sexualities that are piercing the contemporary art scene will be navigated by Caroline Elgh who will accompany our journey into the tantalizing yet fragile worlds of activism of pleasure. This brilliant scholar will help eco- and hydrosexuals to explore yet untapped potential of their work for more-than-human humanities. Or, to put it more bluntly, Caroline will be checking the chemistry between eco-queer sexualities and the extra humanities The Posthumanities Hub creates a platform for. To help bringing closer together the practices and ideas developed across the arts, activist, and academic worlds of the arts, blue and environmental humanities, she will be a shapeshifter of the webinar.
So, buckle up and prepare to shake up the academic scene as we explore fun, experimental, and creative ways to engage sensually and sexually with ecology and critical humanities.
Brace yourself for an eco- and hydrosexual extravaganza for the critical humanities!
In Scandinavia, we take summer vacation very seriously. It is high time for us at The Posthumanities Hub to wish you all a lovely holiday! You hear back from us in August – eg 31 August we have the first webinar (on soil art) of the Fall Term 2023!
The More-Than-Human Humanities focus series aims to attend to human differences entangled with environmental justice, information technologies, AI, synthetic biology, surveillance systems, species extinction, and drastic ecological change. It draws attention not only to the creativity and potentiality of this reinvention of arts and humanities, but also to that which limits or wounds conditions of life on earth. It addresses the question of how we may learn to live with those wounds and limitations in everyday practice. The titles in the series provide insight into the state-of-the art humanities research in a changing world.
If you have an exciting idea for a book proposal for this book series, please contact the book series editors:
Cecilia Åsberg, Prof Dr Gender, nature, culture at Linköping University, Sweden. Director The Posthumanities Hub – cecilia.asberg@liu.se
Marietta Radomska, Dr Assistant Professor Gender and Environmental Humanities, at Linköping University, Director the Eco- and Bio Art Lab – marietta.radomska@liu.se
The Posthumanities Hub round-table workshop On “Creative with concepts”
Speakers: Prof. Nanna Verhoeff (Utrecht University), Prof. Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University), Dr Janna Holmstedt (Sweden’s Historical Museums), Prof. Christina Fredengren (Uppsala University), Prof. Paola Ruiz Moltó (Universitat Jaume) & Prof. Cecilia Åsberg (LiU) with friends.
11th May, 10:15-12:00 CEST, Linköping University, Temahuset, Temcas.
Engaging with what concepts can do, we explore in this experimental round-table workshop what happens in the arts and creative humanities when “theory words” (concepts) work across different research practices. We move through a set of concepts, like, “assembling”, “cartography”, “curation”, “dirt”, “following”, “micrology”, “unlearning” and “wonder” (all from Iris van der Tuin & Nanna Verhoeff’s (2022) Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities, see below how to download it!). Such concepts are put to work differently across the invited speakers’ various research projects. Come meet artistic research on soil and sustainability; museum ecologies and heritage research on past and future waste sites of the present Antropocene; imaginative teacher education with art, science and tiny, tiny critters, as well as other forms of blue/ environmental/ feminist/ more-than-human and creative humanities.
