Symposium « Environmental Entanglements – Art, Technology and Natures »

Symposium « Environmental Entanglements – Art, Technology and Natures »
October 28. -29. (both days from 09-17)
Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, H. C. Andersens Boulevard 35, 1553 Copenhagen

Sessions & Speakers:

Keynote lecture: Professor John Law

Natures (28.10.2014 at 10:00-13:00 hr)

In the midst of the immense human-made ecological changes the conventional separation between the  ‘natural’, the ‘technological’, and the ‘human’ has become increasingly hard to maintain. How the natural and the human are co-evolving and intermingling is a growing field of inquiry. Employing different practical-analytical strategies, artists and academics explore and try to rethink and refigure these entangled natures and what ‘new’ natures mean for our understanding of time, matter and subjectivity. This has given rise to a number of new concepts and approaches. We observe buzzing engagements, for instance, with ‘the anthropocene’ and ‘geological time’. How might such new concepts help us to describe and understand the current ‘epoch’?

• Professor John Law (UK) Open university / IT university Copenhagen “Denaturalising Nature”
• Dr. Jamie Lorimer (UK) Oxford University “Wildlife in the Anthropocene: environmentalism without Nature”
• Dr. Monika Bakke (PL) Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland “Tentative Materialities: Art and the ‘geological infiltration’ of life”

Sensing Change and Mediating Climates (28.10.2014 at 14:00-17:00 hr)

Environmental changes unfold over temporal and geographical scales, so tiny or vast that they often escape the human sensorium. Our perception and comprehension of these changes are therefore to a large degree depending on techno-scientific instruments and models that measure and mediate the environment for us. The graphs and images of climate change that so vividly travels the media space have a great impact on the way environmental issues are understood and dealt with and they are thus never neutral. In this session we aim to recover the role of technology in relation to our understanding of the environment. Alongside scientists, artists are employing technologies to explore environmental issues and to unravel the role of technology. How do technologies participate in shaping our understanding of the environmental changes? What kind of sensation do they enable? What kind of politics do images and mediations enact? How do the practices of the artist relate to as well as differ from that of the scientist?

• Dr. Dehlia Hannah (US) C21 “Equivocal Instruments”
• Dr. Birgit Schneider (DE) Universität Potsdam “Red Futures. Making Climate Change imaginable through Expert Graphs”
• Artist and associate Prof. Andrea polli (US) University of New Mexico “A Walk in the Woods: Intersections between Environment, Culture and Information Space”

Publics, Participation and Politics (29.10.2014 at 09:30-12:30 hr)

Environmental problems and ‘green’ transitions are inherently traversed with more or less visible political issues. Technologies are not only useful tools for sensing the environment and developing alternative infrastructures, they also give rise to new kinds of ‘politics’, ranging from novel forms of public participation and inclusion of non-humans, to new ways of governing people. In this session we will explore how artists investigate and explicate political entanglements between technologies and ‘natural’ environments and between the human and nonhuman species inhabiting these environments. How are politics and technologies tied up? What kind of alternative ‘political’ engagement might art offer through the use of technologies, and what are the limitations? How does it make sense to sustain an idea about art as autonomous, when working with art entangled with environmental issues? And if not, how might we describe arts’ specific contributions?

• Prof. Malcolm Miles (UK) Plymouth University “The strange relation of art and green politics”
• Artists Helen Evens & Heiko Hansen (UK/DE) HeHe “Man Made Clouds”
• Dr. Jennifer Gabrys (UK) “Sensing practices and Environmental Monitoring: putting political Technologies to Work”

Rethinking Infrastructures (29.10.2014 at 13:30-16:30 hr)

Cities, infrastructures and energy sources are proclaimed to constitute great potential for mitigating climate change and environmental problems. Infrastructures are furthermore of interest because they materialize specific ideas and perceptions of how humans inhabit and affect the environment. A growing number of artists and academics have taken up the challenge of re-imagining and re-designing the infrastructures we depend upon, by proposing alternative rationales and creative solutions. In many of these artistic proposal infrastructures are re-conceptualized as dynamic, organic and creative structures, which work across conventional boundaries between the natural and the build environment, human and non-human needs, recreation and function. What role do infrastructures play in the modern society, and how is the notion of infrastructure tied up with certain ideas about society and nature? How is infrastructure re-conceptualized in order to support new ways of living that are less environmentally damaging? What role does art play in the transition to more sustainable infrastructures?

• Jason Bregman (Michael Singer Studio) (US) “Engaging art, landscape, infrastructure, and ecological renewal”
• Artist Elizabeth Monoian & Architect Robert Ferry (US) “Land Art Generator Initiative” 
• Prof. Ellen Marie Braae (DK) Copenhagen university “Digging futures – recycling ruinous industrial landscapes”

All informations on : www.energyfutures.itu.dk

Registration is free, but there are limited seats. Register here
For any questions, contact Stine Kondrup at skon@itu.dk
Download the interactive invitation here

The symposium is generously funded by: Oticon Fonden and Aksel Tovborg Jensens Legat