The Zooetics+ Symposium commences Friday, April 27, 2018 with the sessions “What Does Ecosystemic Thinking Mean Today” and “Knowledge Production Through Making and Living with Other Species,” discussing the habits of thought associated with cybernetics and the transition towards new thinking, inspired by sympoietics. The day will be finalized with a session speculating on what non-human imagination could look like in the session “The Radical Imagination: Toward Overcoming the Human.”
On Saturday, April 28, the program will explore further devices for ecosystemic thinking, discussing relevant artistic methods and practices in the panel “Artistic Intelligence, Speculation, Prototypes, Fiction.” “Creating Indigenous Futures” will be explored through bringing Indigenous values together with science and technology. The need for other, alternative vantage points—of species, of time, of traditions, of beings will be addressed in the session “Futures of Symbiotic Assemblages: Multi-naturalism, Monoculture Resistance and “The Permanent Decolonization of Thought.”
The symposium will conclude with a roundtable and launch of a new artistic research program “Sympoiesis: New Research, New Pedagogy, and New Publishing in Radical Inter-disciplinarity.”
Zooetics+ will be accompanied by a program of performances and installations by Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Allora and Calzadilla, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, Rikke Luther and NODE Berlin/Oslo.
Detailed Schedule and Description of Program Sessions:
FRIDAY, APRIL 27
9:30 AM Registration
10:00 AM Opening Ceremony by Erin Genia
10:15 AM Introduction to Zooetics+ Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM What Does Ecosystemic Thinking Mean Today?
Genealogy, impact and legacy of ecosystematic thought since the dawn of cybernetics. How have the infrastructures changed today since the publication of “Limits to Growth” or “Whole Earth Catalogue”? What tools are there to attune ourselves to perceive the interconnections of natural and man-made systems and to be able to make ethical, political, aesthetic decisions? This session is engaged with the question of how to transition from the habits of thought associated with cybernetics towards new thinking… perhaps sympoietics?
Cary Wolfe and Sophia Roosth
Respondent: Lars Bang Larsen
12:00 PM -1:30 PM Lunch break and Banner Tow Flight by Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM Knowledge Production Through Making and Living with Other Species
Visions for species equality. Conviviality. Accessing other-than-human ways of knowing. Learning from other species (vis-a-vis biomimicry of other species)
Scott Gilbert and Stefan Helmreich
Moderator: Caitlin Berrigan
Respondent: Caroline A Jones
3:10 PM – 4:30 PM The Radical Imagination: Toward Overcoming the Human
Often reduced to a capacity of either a subject or consciousness, imagination could be thought as a way of opening up to the future and the unknown. Simultaneously being a sphere of change and transformation, it invents the directions of its own development and acts as a link between a human and the powers of the world. However, is it possible transcend human imagination? What would a non-human imagination look like? The field of imagination enables the exposure of radically impossible possibilities, introduces the perspectives of their development, and overcomes predetermined articulations and representations.
Chiara Bottici, Richard Kearney and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Respondent: Kristupas Sabolius
SATURDAY April 28
9:30 AM Registration
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Artistic Intelligence, Speculation, Prototypes, Fiction. Learning Through Artistic Methods.
Artistic methods of speculation, prototype making, modelling and fiction as pedagogical devices for ecosystemic thinking.
Jennifer Allora, Heather Davis, and Sheila Kennedy
Respondents: Larissa Harris and Laura Serejo Genes
11:45 AM – 1:15 PM Creating Indigenous Futures: Indigenous artists discuss their work in relationship to futurity and creative reclamation
Looking ahead to future generations, sustained by the strength of our ancestors and wise to the challenges of living in fraught times, how do we bring our values as Indigenous people to our work in creating Indigenous futures? As artists, how do we apply Indigenous science and technology to creating these futures?
Courtney Leonard (Shinnecock), Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Kite (Oglala Lakota)
Respondent: Mario Caro
1:30 PM -2:30 PM Lunch break
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM Futures of Symbiotic Assemblages: Multi-naturalism, Monoculture Resistance and “The Permanent Decolonization of Thought”
In the age of post-truth, peak oil, alternative facts, and the alternative right, it has never been more urgent to defend the need for the coexistence of other, alternative vantage points – of species, of time, of traditions, of beings.
Emmanuel Alloa, Kim TallBear, with Nuno Gomes Loureiro (Physics Department MIT), ACT graduate students
Respondents: Gediminas Urbonas, Laura Knott, and Nolan Dennis
4:30PM – 5:30PM Closing remarks and future plans:
Sympoiesis: New Research, New Pedagogy, and New Publishing in Radical Inter-disciplinarity
Florian Schneider, Corinne Diserens, Lars Bang Larsen, Gediminas Urbonas, Nomeda Urbonas, Judith Barry, Gary Zhang
6:00 Chalk by ALLORA AND CALZADILLA
6:30PM RECEPTION AT THE MUDDY CHARLES PUB
8:00 NODE PROJECTION EVENT
8:30 PM RASA SMITE and RAITIS SMITS, BIOTRICITY, at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics
9:30 PM RIKKE LUTHER PERFORMANCE AT ACT CUBE
Register here
