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– an assembly across species lines
November 6-8, 2015 at Dome of Visions in Copenhagen, Denmark
Featuring artworks by:
Lisbeth Bank(DK)/ Honey Biba Beckerlee (DK)/ Laura Beloff (FN)/ Adam Bencard (DK)/ Karin Bolender (US)/ Beatriz da Costa (BR)/ Elisabeth Friis (DK)/ Fugt (DK) / Fran Gallardo (SP / UK)/ Tue Greenfort (DK)/ Donna Haraway (US)/ Johannes Heldén (SE)/ Kathy High (US)/ Marie Højlund & Morten Riis (DK)/ Natalie Jeremijenko (AU)/ Eduardo Kac (BR / US)/ Rosemary Lee (US)/Ny Jord (DK) / Anna Maria Orru (SE / IT)/ Angela Rawlings (CAN / IS)/ Asbjørn Skou (DK)/ Morten Søndergaard (DK)
The sensitive plant Mimosa Pudica summons experiences of transspecies interdependence in sensory exchanges between humans and flora. A rapidly growing – and potentially hostile – mould calls attention to the fact that we share our homes, our surroundings and even our bodies with a myriad of livings beings, all presenting us with different ways of inhabiting this world. An intimate portrait of cancer in the junction between human bodies and the bodies of laboratory mice investigates knots and obligations across species lines in questions of life and death.
The assembly TRANSSPECIES is full of bastards, hybrids and swarms of interspecies connections. TRANSSPECIES presents art works and thoughts from the vantage of current environmental crisis and the so called ‚anthropocene‘ geological age that challenge the identity and reality of the Western (hu)man. The acuteness of the need to invent new and radically different relations with the innumerable nonhuman creatures inhabiting the earth with ‚us‘ is evident. This calls for bold commitments and serious ventures into non-anthropocentric world views and perspectives that do presuppose the binary oppositions between humans and organic others so fundamental to Western thinking.
In recent years a new wave of contemporary artists and thinkers have engaged in transdisciplinary work drawing attention to environmental questions by investigating the various ways we – humans, animals, bacteria and plants – keep each other company. What worlds are (de)composed in transspecies encounters? What stories stem from the intricate knottings between companions originating from different gene pools? And what are the ethical, philosophical and linguistic consequences of the uncountable interspecies enmeshments of economic, biological, semiotic, and – not least – emotional character?
TRANSSPECIES investigates the current involvements of the contemporary art scene in environmental issues, climate crisis and multispecies assemblies emphasizing the importance of re-negotiating transspecies ethics, and developing new strategies for planetary care and recuperation across species lines.
The assembly presents new productions, as well as already existing works in a variety of installation, sculpture, video and performance. Artists instigate aesthetic experiments in collaboration with other species hereby putting transhuman bodies, identities and voices at stake in muddy contact zones. TRANSSPECIES explores the potentials of artistic practices in articulating new stories about ‘us’ and ‘them’, and experimenting with collaborations that transgress the isolation of anthropocentrism.
The festival takes place in Dome of Visions in Copenhagen. In addition to the exhibited works the festival will offer performances, readings, workshop, talks and open-table discussions transforming Dome of Visions to a public, experimental assembly for the junctions and cross-breedings human and non-human; between art and science.
TRANSSPECIES is curated by Laboratory for Aesthetic and Ecology
TRANSSPECIES is generously supported by Beckett-Fonden, Fonden for Ånd,Vækst og Bevidsthed, The Swedish Arts Council and The Danish Arts Council.
For more information and press photos please contact:
Dea Antonsen and Ida Bencke, curators and co-founders of Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology: contact@labae.org.
FONDEN FOR ÅND, VÆKST OG BEVIDSTHED
Rural Alchemy Workshop (R.A.W.) 