Paper short abstract:

Olfaction is a vital and yet often neglected sensory aspect of place-making. This paper explores the relationship between olfactory landscapes and solastalgia and how artistic practices can trace the complex affective experiences of ecological grief and loss and make space for justice and optimism.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we think through the significance of olfactory landscapes to the rapidly changing, multi-species experiences of place. Smellscapes are recognised as an important part of human wellbeing and health and are vital aspects of culture and memory, including grief rituals. However, the role of olfaction in human and more-than-human experiences of environmental change and loss is not so well understood. We explore solastalgia (distress caused by environmental change) through a more-than-human olfactory lens, asking how smellscapes contribute to place-making by humans and non-humans and trace how olfaction contributes to human and non-human distress at the changes or loss of place. We discuss how olfactory art-making and creative practice can be used to understand and guide us through distress and grief. We also explore the emergence of novel olfactory ecologies and how olfactory creative practice can help us welcome or imagine just and regenerative worlds.

Paper short abstract:

How to bridge art and science to explore murky natural-artificial binaries and offer strategies to navigate a rapidly changing Arctic and facing ethical complexities. Using machine learning, archives and cases like Inari missile and Tsar Bomba to explore impact on our Anthropocenic reality.

Paper long abstract:

The paper investigates the haunting legacy of techno and techno- and military skeletons "Monsters of the North" in the Arctic region, framing them as postnatural phenomena. Bringing in case studies together with artistic practises utilizing machine learning, archives and earth observation methods, it illustrates how these 'monsters' are woven into the fabric of the Anthropocene, blurring distinctions between natural and artificial worlds. These failed machinations of human pursuit are symbolic, of broader issues we are facing in polycrise revolving from rapidly accelerating change in climate. This work seek tto extend transdisciplinary discourse on how artistic and research practices can confront, mourn, and even reframe our understanding of postnatural. Amid the melting ice sheets and shifting geopolitics of the Arctic lies a lesser-discussed topic: the techno and military remains from past eras. These "Monsters of the North" represent a collision between technology, politics, and environment. From radioactive fallout from bomb testing to lost planes and missiles, these constructs lie dormant and radiate both literal and metaphorical. They question the binary between living and non-living entities and culture, presenting ontological, epistemological, and ethical challenges. This paper seeks to unravel these entities in the context of postnatural/biological discussions. Incorporating narratives such as Inari missile and the Tsar Bomba, it examines how these "monsters" impact human and more-than-human worlds. Through artistic and research, the paper explores strategies to confront and reckon these manifestations, proposing that facing our monstrous creations may be a vital step toward navigating the complexities of a rapidly transforming Arctic landscape.

Paper short abstract:

This paper departs in a multisensory and transdisciplinary artistic practice, where vibration is used to transform our relation to geological matter. It proposes a mode of dynamic difference as a method to reconsider ways of being with the nonhuman, to reconsider our relation to death and mourning.

Paper long abstract:

In geology there is a transformational morphism present, which over time has inscribed layers of resonance and decay into its formations. In these layers, modes of anthropocentric erosion and exploitation exist as slow violence (Nixon 2013) and necroecological plasticity (Filipović 2023), with our human presence written into the earth that we thread. Through this line of thought, this paper wishes to reflect on an artistic way to relate to disaster and mourning through a relation to geological matter, as condensation (Yusoff 2015), where vibration activates layers of the presumed inert.

Through a multisensory and transdisciplinary series of sound art works and performances titled stone-meditation (kivimeditaatio), I have been exploring the resonance of geology, using vibration as a method to transform our relation to matter and mourning, as a dwelling with the in-between, being not-quite-dead. My aim is to consider the potential of geological matter through a mode of difference which is dynamic, indefinite - as a vibration which bounces off and repeats itself; multiplying, and being never quite the same. Difference is here considered a process, a flux, in an ever-changing becoming (Deleuze 1968), where each vibrational mode de- and reactivate their sounding across the surfaces they (re)act with. In our transversal relation to the world, and its ecologies (Guattari 1989), we thus rewrite ways of being with the nonhuman, to (un)learn, attune, vibrate, and reconsider our relation to death and mourning.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines artistic practices as a laboratory for exploring more-than-human temporalities and future-making and how those practices can operate as a test-bed for engaging with temporalities beyond human time.

Paper long abstract:

Grounded in the Anthropocene discourse, the realisation of human activity as a geological agent poses the challenge of rethinking and reassessing human temporalities and humanity’s relation with its environment. This results in a geologic turn in the arts and humanities (Turpin 2012) and leads to geologic practices and thinking which go beyond the earth sciences to probe and apply questions of deep time and deep futures concerning intentional and inadvertently anthropogenic activity with marked potential deep future implications.

One lens through which such an anthropogenic impact can be read is that of contamination (Parikka 2023) and with respect to the Anthropocene not only in terms of the contamination of the environment but of time itself. It is now that humanity draws the temporalities that future generations and other entities have for themselves or have to deal with.

With a series of artistic case studies (including artists like Andy Gracie, Katie Paterson, Martin Howse, Susan Schuppli and the author), this paper examines artistic practices dealing with contamination and temporalities beyond human time.

Intersecting cultural anthropology, with posthumanities, geology, and art, the paper aims to articulate and demonstrate both, how transdisciplinary artistic practices may be capable of addressing more-than-human time scales and how the imaginaries brought forward by artists are exploring the conditions for a politics of temporal scale, that is, how humanity can engage with temporalities beyond human time. The paper will apply Alfred Gell’s anthropological theory of art (1998) to examine the artistic mediation of the artwork's potential social agency.

Paper short abstract:

Theoretically grounded in queer death studies, this paper explores the aesthetics and ethics of present grief imaginaries and engagements with environmental violence, ecocide, more-than-human death, dying, and extinction, as they are interwoven through contemporary bio-, eco- and new-media artworks.

Paper long abstract:

We mourn humans, we mourn nature, we mourn the past. While the notion of bereavement linked to the death of a human or to the loss of that which has already passed is societally accepted or even expected from an individual, the mourning of nonhuman death and ecological loss has a rather different status. It is frequently described as ‘disenfranchised grief’: not openly accepted or acknowledged in society.

Simultaneously, in the present anthropocenic context, where climate change and planetary environmental destruction render certain habitats unliveable and induce socio-economic inequalities and shared ‘more-than-human’ vulnerabilities, death and loss become urgent environmental concerns. The killing of nonhuman populations, annihilation of ecosystems and species extinction mobilise discussions among scientists, politicians, legal experts, environmental activists, and general society, and also, increasingly pervade cultural imaginaries, narratives, and contemporary art. Works by visual artists such as Terike Haapoja, Brandon Ballengée, IC-98, Gwen Curry or Svenja Kratz open up spaces of rehearsing ecological grief and mourning.

Theoretically grounded in queer death studies and posthumanities, this paper explores present grief imaginaries and engagements with environmental violence, ecocide, more-than-human death, dying, and extinction, as they are interwoven through contemporary bio-, eco- and new-media artworks. It is there where an ecological ontology of death is being exposed and ethical territories of eco-grief unfold. While examining affective landscapes of select art projects, the paper argues for art’s unique potential for re-attuning our sensorial and cognitive coordinates to the demands of the more-than-human crises and transition times we have found ourselves in.

Paper short abstract:

Lament reworks archaic forms of grief expression via artistic research on post-wildfires ecologies. The transdiciplinary collaboration involves bioart, performance, and community engagement. Often overlooked, burnt soil becomes central in the exploration of more-than-human temporalities.

Paper long abstract:

Currently in development, Lament explores ecologies of death in soil and environmental grief after extreme wildfires via artistic research. It features engagement with communities affected by fires and the creation of a bioart and performance piece that reworks archaic forms of grief expression. Probing more-than-human temporalities, Lament looks at yet-to-come transformations in ash and silence after flames have died out.

The research interrogates fire as postnatural co-evolution of ecosystems and humans – as for instance in species adaptation or traditional agriculture. Yet, fires become noxious on unbalanced ecosystems. Moreover, human-induced environmental disruption has altered fire regimes, with fires developing in unusual seasons and with destructive size.

Considering the co-evolution of ecosystems and humans, Lament teams up with environmentalists to design an open-source toolkit for sensory mapping and community engagement that can, in the future, be adopted in projects on environmental trauma.

The contrast between the dramatic blazes and the silence of charred landscape is expressed in the artwork via the attention to soil, otherwise commonly overlooked. In collaboration with scientists, I will collect burnt soil and ash from wildfires sites and use it for the performance’s set design. The latter will then remain as non/living installation made with scientific and biohacking methods and evolve throughout the duration of the exhibition.

The double register of Lament aims to let go conventional understanding of that which is still called nature, for more-than-human transformations intersect. In such a space, more-than-human death and grief are dignified as anticipatory of hopefully compassionate futures.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation explores the possibilities of love in the context of mourning as manifesting in the transdisciplinary artistic practices of art_research duo, cyber_nymphs. Credited for launching the hydrosexual movement, they will link the hydrosex manifesto with the River Oder catastrophe.

Paper long abstract:

In 2022, the Oder became the site of one of the largest ecological disasters in the environmental history of Europe. This catastrophe was triggered by discharges of saline wastewater, e.g. from the Silesian and Lower Silesian mines. The alteration in the hydrochemical composition of the water led to an increased proliferation of golden algae, resulting in extensive biodiversity loss in the river. Approximately 360 tons of fish perished, and the mussel population declined by 60%. Human-induced pollution and factors related to climate change have made it challenging for the river to recover.

The EU Report released in 2023 addresses the ecological catastrophe as a lesson for Europeans, emphasizing the need to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future. The report includes recommendations for the national authorities of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany to enact legislation in response. Poland, which covers 86% of the river's flow within its territory, disregarded the EU's call for environmental protection. Consequently, the responsibility for taking action and driving change has shifted to a grassroots effort.

In 2023 art_research duo cyber_nymphs launched the hydrosexual movement to entice love and care for the aquatic ecosystems through environmental art and to build the community against the water-centered climate crises. With a focus specifically on digital art and eco-technologies, in our presentation, we will demonstrate the hydrosex manifesto exploring environmental reproductive health and rights, the transformative qualities of living and death, and the future-making aspects of the concept of more-than-human sexualities as related to Oder.

Paper short abstract:

Through an analysis of various works of climate fiction, I argue that the Bildungsroman—the coming-of-age novel—as a literary form is uniquely positioned to narrativize the process of moving beyond climate grief and adapting to a climate-changed world.

Paper long abstract:

Climate-change discourse is suffused with a profound sense of loss, amid accelerating ecological degradation. While some environmental literary critics consider the elegy an apt means of narrativizing these losses, others call for genres capable of moving beyond mourning and toward adaptive transformation. I argue that the coming-of-age novel, the Bildungsroman—which typically depicts a protagonist who undergoes a transformational journey following crisis, and eventually comes to terms with the world—may narrativize the process of moving beyond climate grief and adapting to a climate-changed world. I indicate a corpus of novels that may be termed "climate Bildungsromane," which envision a range of transformations following climate grief. Through an analysis of a few significant examples, I explore climate Bildungsromane’s tendency to narrate the journey from ecocatastrophe to adaptation through a fusion of modern scientific rationality with forms of belief and storytelling commonly considered premodern. I consider how and why this enigmatic paradox surfaces across cultural imaginings of journeys beyond climate grief.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyze a series of contemporary Latin American techno-aesthetic practices wich investigate new potencies of acting, imagining and thinking the current scenario and the future from a situated epistemological perspective and through a material exploration of the artistic processes.

Paper long abstract:

In the 21st century, two seemingly irreversible phenomena have become unavoidable: the progressive devastation of natural environments caused by human action and the increasing technification of all our experiences. It seems clear that thinking about both issues becomes an urgent matter, but how can we think about these issues, bringing them together? How does contemporary art address the environmental and civilizational crisis? These questions, and their answers, take on particular inflections in Latin America, where the cyclical social and political crises tragically update the plundering of natural resources, the extermination of native populations, the contamination of food, and neo-extractivism.

This paper aims to analyze contemporary Latin American techno-aesthetic practices that explore new potentialities of acting, imagining and thinking the planetary crisis from perspectives committed to the diagnosis of the "end of the world" and located in the global south. This paper will be guided by the following precise questions: How do contemporary techno-aesthetics in Latin America highlight the ethical-political logics of intervention in diverse forms of existence and in the "environment"? What alternative narrative forms emerge from these new distributions between nature and culture embodied in the technical images? This paper proposes that techno-aesthetic materials, through their logics of material and media existence, trace a political ecology capable of diagramming a non-anthropic sensibility in contemporary Latin American aesthetic practices, rewriting the codes of modern aesthetics from which poetics and politics have been thought in the art of this region.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines photographic states of capturing and revealing used in my research to better apprehend binary expressions of life, death and defiance of the photo-dermy concept, which emerged from explorations of the relationship between the photograph and a museum gallery of taxidermied dogs.

Paper long abstract:

There is something distinctly uncanny (unheimlich) about the museum taxidermy specimen in its representation of the living and the dead, none more so than the taxidermied domestic dog specimens on display at the Natural History Museum in Tring, England.

Through my research project, 'Dogs: An Inert State', I explored the relationship between the photograph and these taxidermied dogs - specifically their expressions of a Freudian double death-defiance, a manifestation of what I term the photo-dermy concept. This paper examines two photographic conditions, namely, capturing and revealing, which I applied in the making of these photographs to study more closely, how unseen traits such as death and defiance might be traced from the taxidermied referent to the photograph.

I was compelled to photograph these inert dog specimens as a way of apprehending their inertia and their defiance - their complex memetic nature defines them as one thing (dead), yet, they are also representative of something else (lifelikeness). The same could be said of the photograph, which essayist, Roland Barthes, describes as a perverse confusion between the Real and Live (1981, p79). Both taxidermy specimen and photograph are mutually ambiguous and equally complex. They both express binary expressions such as life-death, loss-return, the visible-unseen and the familiar-strange and I established the photo-dermy concept in my practice-research to enable an exploration of these traits.

The project can be viewed here: https://acm-photo.com/portfolio/dogs.