Presentation short abstract

The talk contrasts the technoscience of seedbanking with the commemoration of agrobiocultural diversity in an art project as different affectively charged responses to agrobiodiversity loss. They evoke different forms of hope for futurity, which in turn inform different practices of future-making.

Presentation long abstract

In light of the tremendous loss and destruction of biodiversity in the Anthropo*cene, seedbanks have become promissory carriers of socio-ecological hope for futurity. An iconic example is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), an international seed storage facility in the Arctic acting as the world’s stronghold against crop diversity loss. In this talk, I discuss what it means to rethink agrobiodiversity loss as a global challenge that not only requires technical solutions but also evokes affective responses worth attending to. I do so through an art project curated in response to the SGSV and its bio-centric approach to agrobiodiversity conservation. The Agri/Cultures.Seed-Links project (Svalbard, 2019) was a one-day exhibition of agrobiocultural diversity from all around the world that was subsequently buried in the permafrost alongside the SGSV, as a biocultural addendum to its seed collection. Conceiving the art project as a performance of commemorating agrobiocultural diversity and mourning its loss, I unfold a critical perspective on both the what and the how of seedbanking as the hegemonic international response to agrobiodiversity loss. Whereas the SGSV evokes a techno-salvationist hope for ongoingness that disregards and even perpetuates the naturalcultural relations underlying agrobiodiversity loss, the art project prefigures a mournful hope for burying destructive forms of life and cultivating less destructive worlds that arises from attending to how forms of life are entangled in forms of loss. I show that centring on the affective dimensions of different responses to socio-ecological transformation and loss allows for a more nuanced understanding of future-making practices.