17 July 2020
Interconnection & Multidimensionality— an interview about forests and exhibition-making with Anna-Sophie Springer by Vida Rucli for Robida #7

This year began with a seemingly never-ending pandemic lockdown, but for RN it was also blessed with Anna-Sophie’s ongoing correspondence with Vida Rucli, one of the founding editors of the magazine Robida. They exchanged about forests and exhibition-making as Vida asked many questions about the collaborative work that went into the intercalations: paginated exhibition series and Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest. The new issue of the editorial collective that Vida is a part of grew to 336 pages and contains pieces by dozens of contributors; they are published in their respective languages. Below you can download a pdf of Anna-Sophie’s conversation with Vida. Enjoy!
"Interconnection & Multidimensionality" (pdf)

2021 03 25 – 05 29
ponds among ponds: an exhibition of threshold behavior & nested life— curated by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin at ICA Shanghai

2021 03 27ponds among ponds: roundtable & virtual film screening— Talk in the exhibition with curators, artists, & scientists

Sat, 27 Mar, 16:00–17:30 CST / 9:00–10:30 CET Online Chinese and English To kick off the public program of ponds among ponds: an exhibition of threshold behaviors & nested life, join the curators Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin and the participating artists (Pauline Doutreluingne, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Monika Lin, Kobe Mattys (Agency), Chenyu Mao, and Maximilian Prüfer), in conversation with scientists from NYU Shanghai, DONG Ningning (Fudan University), Sascha Krause (East China Normal University), PAN Yan (Fudan University), and ZHANG Minhua (East China Normal University), as they discuss the exhibition ponds among ponds and film Symbiotic Earth. The film is available for screening online one week prior to the roundtable discussion, starting on 20 March. Video recording coming soon ica.shanghai.nyu.edu/program/roundtable-with-curators-artists-and-scientists Get link to film "Symbiotic Earth" (dir. John Feldman, 2018) about Lynn Margulis.

2015–2021
Intercalations: paginated exhibition— six-part series edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

The "intercalations: paginated exhibition" series (2015–21). Photo: K. Verlag The “intercalations: paginated exhibition” series is an experimental foray exploring the structure of the book as a potential curatorial space. As the reader-as-exhibition-viewer moves through these books-as-exhibition, she discovers that the erratic intercalations of the Anthropocene invite new forms of literacy, visuality, inquiry, and speculation that are, in the words of Clarice Lispector, less promiscuous than they are kaleidoscopic. This six-part series was developed by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin for the Berlin Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Anthropocene Project as a commission of the HKW’s Synapse Curators’ Network. It provokes questions about the validity of seeming categorical binaries such as culture and nature, human and non-human, subject and object, book and exhibition. The first volume, “Fantasies of the Library” (2015), inaugurates the series by investigating the book as space, scaffold, and medium for various ecologies of thought. The second volume, “Land & Animal & Nonanimal” (2015), focuses on the postnatural landscapes and specimens of the Earth; “Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago” (2017), the third volume, examines the mobility of colonial collections and the environmental transformations they co-produced, elaborating on the world of British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his explorations of the Southeast Asian Malay archipelago in the mid-nineteenth century. Volume four, “The Word for World Is Still Forest” (2017), explores the forest as a set of confounding references of the Anthropocene, while the fifth volume, “Decapitated Economies” (2021), questions the “head” and its underestimation of the sophistication of corporeal desire when such intensities are released in accordance with the principles of a general economy. The final volume of the series, “These Birds of Temptation” (2021), is conceived as a refrain, populated with both acoustical lines of ight and the sorrows of captivity, in order to consider the minor science of ornithology and its various organizational logics. Together, these six volumes are published as printed matter paperback books, as well as web-based, open-access publications, leading their reader-as-exhibition viewers along a series of bifurcating trajectories where curators, artists, scientists, activists, storytellers, and writers pose urgent questions about contemporary struggles for both the cultivation, preservation, and reformation of biomes and their organisms, for land rights and territorial negotiations, and for possible new social, political, and more-than-human life forms. “intercalations: paginated exhibition” series. Edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin; design in collaboration with Katharina Tauer. Made possible by Schering Stiftung. "intercalations: paginated exhibition" series at K. Verlag "intercalations: paginated exhibition" series at Haus der Kulturen der Welt

2021 03 05More or Less Subdued: Colonial Images & Capital Accumulation— lecture by Nashin Mahtani & Etienne Turpin for the Architectural Association's HCT & PhD Debates

How does the colonial image persist as a means of extending the violence of colonialism and enabling capital accumulation? Consider two examples: first, according to a 1937 film promoting the overseas possessions of Asiatic Holland, “The Javanese by nature are a quiet and peaceful people more or less subdued by the vertical rays of an equatorial sun, as well as the benevolence of mother nature, who has favoured them with a constant bounty of tropical fruit.” Left out of the film is the structural violence against peoples and ecologies that accompanied the Dutch in Nusantara, as well as all the other means by which Indonesians and their lands were “more or less subdued” to colonial rule and its attendant plunder. It is necessary to remember that the 142-year colonization of Indonesia by the Dutch Empire was preceded by 200 years of asymmetrical mercantilist relations with the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The VOC was the world’s first multinational corporation, one of the most profitable, and the largest corporate entity ever to exist. The first permanent colonial “trading post” was established in Banten in 1603; by 1619, under the direction of the new Governor-General of the VOC, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the Dutch attacked Indonesia with nineteen ships and seized the site which would become Batavia (and, eventually, Jakarta). Three and a half centuries later, the Dutch controlled territory within the Malay Archipelago fifty times the size of the Netherlands. A second example: in March 2020, as Dutch construction and engineering firms were aggressively trying to secure construction contracts for the construction of Indonesia’s recently announced “new capital,” Ingrid van Engelshoven, the Dutch minister of culture, accompanied Stijn Schoonderwoerd, the director of Leiden’s Museum of Ethnology, to The Hague in order to return Prince Diponegoro’s kris (a traditional dagger) to Indonesia’s ambassador to the Netherlands, I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja. (Diponegoro is renowned in Indonesia for leading the most formidable rebellion against Dutch colonial rule; his betrayal in March 1830, under the pretence of a ceasefire, is understood as a defining, treacherous episode in the history of European colonialism in the archipelago.) As an act of postcolonial restitution became the veritable bribery mechanism for neocolonial extraction and lucrative engineering and construction contracts, it is critical to examine how images of repatriation and restitution are made to circulate within the political economy of global capitalism today. Both of the examples above are borrowed from the video essay “Tidak ada kapital” [There is no capital]; the lecture will unpack these examples, as well as many others from research for the film. The aim is to discuss the role of image production and mediation as a space between discourse and construction wherein it is possible to ask: how can colonial images be put to anti-colonial work? What techniques are involved in their reanimation? What is at stake in practices of postcolonial revisionism? And, how can the revisionist images be dismantled to challenge the dominant narratives of capital accumulation today? hct.aaschool 2021 01 20

2021 01 20On Not Being Normal, or, The Whole Anthropocene— lecture by Etienne Turpin in "LAST CALL - How art & design can stimulate new ideas to address the global environmental emergency," convened by Seoul Institute of the Arts, Korea

In this global webinar organized by The Seoul Institute of the Arts in collaboration with Bandung Institute of Technology and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, South Korea, Etienne Turpin will be the first presenter among a unique group of invited speakers——artists, designers, philosophers, and activists from different communities in Europe, Asia, South and North America——who all share their thoughts, practices, experiences, in order to help us understand how art and design can stimulate the productions of new ideas to address the global environmental emergency. Opening Message by Prof. Shabhaz Khan (Jakarta, Indonesia), Director of UNESCO Regional Science Bureau for Asia and the Pacific and Representative to Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste. Speakers: Etienne Turpin (Berlin, Germany), Philosopher & Investigator of international exhibition “Reassembling the Natural,” co-editor of the book “Art in the Anthropocene”; Gwen Cunningham (Dublin, Ireland), Director Circle Economy’s Textiles Programme and coordinator of Sustainability Program at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute; Dwinita Larasati (Bandung, Indonesia), Lecturer at Bandung Institute of Technology and activist at Bandung Creative City Forum; Nam-Jin Park (Ansan, Korea) Professor of Spatial Design at the Seoul Institute of the Arts; Chantal Bilodeau (New York City), Playwright and the Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle; Claudio Scarabottini & Jared McNeill (Spoleto, Italy), Directors of the immersive opera WEATHER#; Reneltta Arluk (Banff, Canada), Artistic Director Indigenous Arts at Ban Center for Arts; Miguel Juan Leon (Papantla, Mexico), Coordinator of the Center for Indigenous Arts,Totonac translator, Interpreter, Pedagogue; Andrea Lerda (Turin, Italy), Historian, Founder of the online project Platform Green, curator of the Museum of the Mountain. Closing Message by Cecile Guidote Alvarez (Manila, Philippines), Director of Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble, UNESCO Artist for Peace, Founder of Philippines Educational Theatre Association and President of the Philippines ITI Convened & moderated by Andrea Paciotto, Professor of Performing Arts at Seoul Institute of the Arts Director of CultureHub Europe seoularts.ac.kr

2021 01 14
Co-opting Natural History— an online lecture with Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin organized by Fieldstations & DAZ Deutsches Architekturzentrum

In this invitation by the German Architecture Center (DAZ) Berlin, we will look back at previous projects of the “Reassembling the Natural” cycle and share some considerations motivating our current research in the context of our forthcoming exhibition “ponds among ponds: an exhibition on threshold behavior & nested lift” at the ICA Shanghai (March-May 2021); here, we are interested in how the relationship between organisms proposes alternative approaches to depicting natural history. Instead of beginning from the assumption that the speciated organism is the basic unit of evolution, what if we consider nested ecologies of life as symbiotic kin that challenge ideas of competition and fitness? Following our readings of Lynn Margulis, Ed Young, Scott Gilbert, and David Quammen, among others, we ask, how can novel spatial strategies and interventions in the standard display technologies of the Natural History Museum contribute to de-naturalizing its presentation of human supremacy? The discoursive event is part of the DAZ series “We need to talk!” curated and moderated by Lidia Gasperoni, Matthias Böttger, and Christophe Barlieb of Fieldstations, an international association promoting research about the Anthropocene; it is produced in cooperation with the Department of Architectural Theory at the Institute for Architecture at TU Berlin. daz.de/en/co-opting-natural-history fieldstations.net

2021 01 07
Club Donna— Guest lecture by Anna-Sophie Springer at Peter Behrens School of Art, Hochschule Düsseldorf

In her contribution to CLUB DONNA, Anna-Sophie Springer will share her curatorial-editorial methodologies with the participants of the seminar organized by Sophie Dars & Carlo Menon (Accattone magazine) at Peter Behrens School of Arts, Hochschule Düsseldorf. The seminar is about a renewed relationship to land, matter, “nature,” and localities against the backdrop of the new climate conditions and explores the work of contemporary artists, photographers, architects, botanists, and landscape designers. pbsa.hs-duesseldorf.de/20201201

2020 12 19
There Is No Capital— article on "reflections and abandonment in Indonesia" by Nashin Mahtani & Etienne Turpin, Kerb Journal 28/2020

“On 26 August 2019, during one of the first major announcements of his second term as president, Joko Widodo confirmed rumours that Indonesia would move its capital from its sprawling current location along the northern edge of the world’s most populated island, Pulau Java, to the province of East Kalimantan on the neighbouring island of Borneo. According to various studies and assessments, the so-called Capital District of Indonesia, known as ‘DKI Jakarta’, required relocation to address two major issues: chronic seasonal flooding during the Southeast Asian monsoon and excessive land subsidence due to rampant but unregulated groundwater extraction. As one island subsides, another is being mapped as a refuge for carefully selected survivors. In what follows, we explore how this attempt to govern from outside the crisis exemplifies current capitalist reactions to climate change. …” Link to article at Kerb Journal

2020 12 17
Earthseeds #4— Anna-Sophie Springer joins curator Maria McLintock in a conversation with students from the MA Environmental Architecture, moderated by Mingxin Li, Yutong Wu, and Christina Leigh Geros

Spanning three days, “Earthseeds” is an online exhibition and event series celebrating the work of the cohorts graduating the MA City Design and MA Environmental Architecture at the RCA’s School of Architecture. Led by the student community from both graduating cohorts, “Earthseeds” features talks, conversations, performances and group discussions, focusing on issues of care, the environment, technology, climate, and social justice. The title, “Earthseed,” is in reference to Octavia Butler’s book “Parable of the Sower.” To sow, to care, to adapt, to persist in the face of adversity and to change: a story that speaks to the uniqueness of this year and to our students’ capacity for adaptation and creativity even in the most difficult circumstances. MA Environmental Architecture, School of Architecture, Royal College of Art London rca.ac.uk/earthseeds

2020 12 15
The UnNatural History Museum— invitation for Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin as guest critics at the AA, London

After months of not being able to travel and/or visit the institutions where a lot of our exhibition-led research takes place we look forward to engage with the cohort of students led by tutors Lily Jencks & Jessica Reynolds. In collective and individual projects, the studio class has been exploring the role of the natural history museum in the context of current ecological emergencies. Due to the pandemic constraints, which have prevented the students to be together in London, each one instead engaged with a museum that is local to them in their home country. After identifying a specific local ecological and/or curatorial problem each designed a proposal for an intervention that rethinks the museum’s structure, role, and purpose. We look forward to learning about their ideas and strategies, and to contribute to their reflections via our own experiences gathered through Reassembling the Natural! The UnNatural History Museum: Unbuilding the Museum Typology, a year-long experimental studio led by tutors Lily Jencks & Jessica Reynolds at the Architectural Association 2020–21 aaschool.ac.uk/experimental/13

2020 09 18
silvopasture works— a video screening program curated by Anna-Sophie Springer for "I Never Read Basel Art Book Fair 2020" @ Schaulager Basel, 3–9 pm & @ Fahrbereitschaft Berlin, 7–9 pm

With “silvopasture works,” Anna-Sophie Springer curated a video program featuring the beautiful work of 15 visual artists, for “I Never Read,” Art Book Fair Basel 2020. In its ninth year, Basel ABF focuses on stories that reveal the explosive nature of current political, ecological, and economic realities. In addition to the presentations of international publishers, these themes are considered in mini-exhibitions, a radio and performance program as well as three outdoor screening programs, including “silvopasture works,” which are broadcast on the 7×5 meter LED-screen on Schaulager building’s facade. About the Video Program: Convening artists from all over the world, this video program is inspired by the practice of silvopasture. Silvopasture is an integrated, holistic approach to agriculture and forestry that allows all types of organisms involved to benefit in mutual ways, forming a balance that supports and co-nourishes each participant across various scales. A tradition of living-with familiar to Indigenous communities on all continents, silvopasture is an act of resistance and sustenance that understands planetary life as compositional and collective. As a complementary approach, silvoculture resonates with independent publishing as a dynamic and collaborative practice nurtured by reciprocity, multiplication, and (re-)distribution; gathering and cultivating ecologies of careful attention, knowing, and sensing on varying scales, from the smallness of a single letter, word, or image to bigger assemblages like the book, a visual sequence, a print-run, a group of positions and voices, a shelf, a book fair, or the world. In this spirit, the pieces shared by comrades in silvopasture works address survival and disappearance from many different vantage points, some using a more documentary approach, while others offer more poetic interventions. Together, the works in print, video, and photography suggest repertoires of interdependence in both love and struggle. Featuring work by: Elisa Balmaceda Rosa Barba Priyanka Basu & Steve Rowell Carolina Borrero Arias Dora García Ana Hupe Geraldine Juárez Armin Linke Hanna Mattes Martina Pozzan Ela Spalding Joel Tauber Raul Walch Tania Willard Curated by Anna-Sophie Springer. With thanks to all participants for the wonderful collaboration and to Eveline Wüthrich for the beautiful opportunity. DETAILED PROGRAM (all works & bios, etc.) Photo above by Ana Hupe

2020 09 08 – 10 04"Musa × paradisiaca L." by Martina Pozzan— photographic display at The Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga

In Fall 2020, the exhibition “Naturecolony” (curated by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin) was planned to take place at The Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga. A new instantiation of our “Reassembling the Natural” project, this interdisciplinary exhibition was focusing on histories of colonial transactions in the Western hemisphere and had been in the works for two years—when it was abruptly called off in May due to the extended campus closures during the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. Luckily, one position—by Martina Pozzan—which was already produced to be displayed in the outdoor area of the university campus, emerged as a solo installation. With her research project “Musa × paradisiaca L.” Pozzan explores the messy space between natural and artificial dimensions of botanical collecting. In vitro propagation methods, seed banks, and both cryogenic and living collections operate at the intersection of technoscientific research and the market-driven commodification of life itself. The photographic series displayed focuses on techniques of biological multiplication in the service of capital accumulation. blackwoodgallery.ca/musa-x-paradisiaca-l See also: "Biomonotony" catalog essay by Etienne Turpin, 2019

April 2020Catalog: Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald— inhabiting the Yearbook of the Natural History Collections Halle/Saale

This publication takes on the format of the Yearbook of the Natural History Collections at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. It gathers reflections and summaries of the three-part traveling exhibition Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald / Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest, which after nearly three years of archive and field research took its final sojourn in the building of the Natural History Collections from October to December 2018. The World as Forest examined the legacies of the nineteenth-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, especially by revisiting his two major collecting expeditions. Wallace, a younger contemporary of Charles Darwin, and his co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, traveled to the Brazilian Amazon and Rio Negro from 1848 to 1852, and later to the Malay Archipelago between 1854 to 1862. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and other partners, the exhibition considered how colonial archives of nature can be mobilized, disassembled, framed, and read in ways that enable a discussion of urgent ecological and systemic questions of injustice today. It convened more than eighteen international artists and activists, including eight new commissions of time- and object-based installations which addressed urgent contemporary issues in Amazonia and Nusantara; these artworks were exhibited alongside a series of curatorial assemblages presenting specimens, artifacts and archival material—all of which intervened in the natural history museum displays and their respective scenographies. This retroactive publication includes full-page color photographs of the exhibition setting at the Zentralmagazin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen in Halle/Saale; it offers contextualizations of all participating artists and their works as well as a selection of related essays and interviews; especially interesting for German readers is the translation of anthropologist Anna Tsing’s thought-provoking essay “Earth Stalked by Man: A Feminist Approach to the Anthropocene” (2016). Reassembling the Natural thanks Dr. Frank Steinheimer, Head of the Natural History Collections in Halle/Saale for the opportunity to make this publication. More about the publication at K. Verlag

August 2019Compensatory Postures: Natural History, Necroaesthetics, and Humiliation— essay by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin in "Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions," eds. Tristan Garcia & Vincent Normand

In this new essay we revisit our curatorial methodology of Reassembling the Natural by focusing on our fieldwork and collection research about the coloniality of ornithological science, especially regarding the tropical birds of paradise. The text was commissioned by Tristan Garcia & Vincent Normand for their edited publication Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions. The book follows the academic workshop series at ECAL Lausanne, where we first presented aspects of our work presented in the essay back in April 2016. The book also includes texts by Etienne Chambaud, Elitze Dulguerova, Anselm Franke, Tristan Garcia, Fabien Giraud & Raphael Siboni, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Yuk Hui, Pierre Huyghe, Jeremy Lecomte, Stéphane Lojkine, Sami Khatib, Rafael Mandressi, Vincent Normand, Peter Osborne, Filipa Ramos, Juliane Rebentisch, Joao Ribas, Pamela Rosenkranz, Lucy Steeds, Olivier Surel, Kim West, and Charles Wolfe. Published by Sternberg Press in August 2019. [ more ]

2019 04 10
nest / nested / nesting— "The Politics of Design," a conference and panel with Etienne Turpin et al. at the "Broken Nature" Triennale Milano at Teatro dell’Arte

The interdisciplinary conference titled »The Politics of Design« was hosted by the Vitra Design Museum at the Triennale Milano on 10 April 2019 as part of Milan Design Week 2019. An international group of high-profile experts from various backgrounds including design, design theory, philosophy, sociology, and political economy took part in three panels – Design and Post-Industry, Design and Post-Governance, as well as Design and Post-Nature. Speakers such as Paola Antonelli, Bruce Sterling, Danah Abdulla, Jan Boelen, Claudia Chwalisz, Indy Johar, Amelie Klein and Etienne Turpin discussed design’s changing role and responsibilities in the 21st century. The conference aimed to foster debate surrounding design’s political relevance and embraced ambiguity and contradiction in an increasingly complex and conflict-ridden world. It aimed to serve as a transformative agent for the classical design industries and to initiate a wider discussion about a design that recognizes its responsibility to society and the planet. design-museum.de/conference-the-politics-of-design Video of the event

2018 02 28
Biomonotony— essay by Etienne Turpin in the catalog for the "Broken Nature" XXII Triennale di Milano

The XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, highlights the concept of restorative design and studies the state of the threads that connect humans to their natural environments—some frayed, others altogether severed. Etienne Turpin’s essay “Biomonotony” is included in the exhibition catalog; it is accompanied by Martina Pozzan’s photographic research Musa x paradisiaca L. on “micropropagation” of plants in the lab; a commercial plant multiplication technique that offers genetically identical shoots for plantations and orchards. Essay (pdf)

2019 01 09–13
Prototype for a Museum of Man— a workshop at the (Un)-Learning Place: The New Alphabet School, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin

The seminar “The New Education: Denaturalizing the Cultural Pedagogy of Museum Technologies” explores the traditional belief in human exceptionalism as one of the foundational principles of museum traditions. The goal of this week-long event, conceived by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin with Andreas Doepke for The New Alphabet School at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, is a collaborative research process for participants to better create and better understand a global-yet-partial taxonomy of the technologies of human exceptionalism in museological culture past and present. The group’s findings will be presented under the title “An Incomplete Museum of Anthroposupremacism” during the Opening Days of the Haus der Kulturen’s new two year cycle “The New Alphabet.” The curriculum event “(Un-)Learning Place” is curated by Boris Buden and Olga von Schubert; it brings convenes 80 international participants in a week-long workshop series led by eight Berlin-based collectives from the scenes of art, culture, and activism with the aim to develop transdisciplinary, decolonial, and anti-hegemonic strategies in relation to data-based knowledge, translation, archives, and embodied infrastructures. hkw.de/2019/unlearning_place

2018 11 23On Networks & Colliding Voices – On Air with Tomás Saraceno— a one-day discursive event at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

On invitation Studio Tomás Saraceno, Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin have prepared the one-day discursive event “On Networks & Colliding Voices” with a keynote by Bruno Latour, and talks and performances by d’bi.young anitafrika, Albert-László Barabási, Fernando Ferroni, Vincenzo Napolano, Lisa Randall, Bronislaw Szerszinski, and Estelle Zhong Mengual. The event is moderated by Anna-Sophie & Etienne together with Tomás Saraceno on the occasion of the artist’s current exhibition “ON AIR” at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. palaisdetokyo.com/voices-collide-day-networks

2018 11 12Species of Exchange – Circulation of Species— invited lecture by Anna-Sophie Springer at ETH Zurich, Design and Architecture Faculty

“Ecologies: Session on Territory, Urbanism, and the Anthropocene” is a series of public debates on the political economy of architecture and territory. Focusing on how the epoch of the Anthropocene reframes our conceptions of the urban and shapes new ecologies, the seminar’s objective is to unravel contemporary forces at work in the formation of the built and natural environment, and, as importantly to spur debates that challenge the status quo. Every intervention by a guest speaker is followed by a panel discussion with invited respondents. In this lecture, Anna-Sophie Springer will discuss a series of recent research and projects including the exhibition “Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest.” The event will be moderated by Dubravka Seculic. Thank you to Marc Angelil for the kind invitation.

2018 10 30 – 11 01Dickering for Emperor Birds and Macho Ferns— invited conference paper by Anna-Sophie Springer to the panel "More-Than-Human Imperial Legacies in the Capitalocene" at Max-Planck-Institut Göttingen

“Scientific expeditions were crucial to projects of colonial expansion and contributed to accruing imperial prestige. The aspiration to dominate nature was intrinsic to imperial demonstrations of power that, as evidence of their superiority, sought to conquer and tame far away landscapes inhabited by exoticized humans and non-humans. The impressive amount of ethnographic objects, plants and animals collected—or rather, amassed and appropriated—over the centuries built the foundation for natural history museums as well as botanical gardens and zoos across Europe. This panel sets to explore how imperial ecological legacies and narratives reverberate in the Capitalocene. Moving beyond imperial (hi)stories that centre on the human experience, we find it crucial to contextualize imperial trajectories in environmental destruction and violence by extending our attention to the increasingly precarious livelihoods of nonhuman actors. The panel stimulates debate on how ‘nature’ remembers and provides us with rich archives that may enlighten our understanding of how institutions, practices, and ethics that originated under imperialism (e.g. natural history museums, forest management, hunting rights, and animal diplomacy) still figure today.” The conference at MPI Göttingen is organized by Annika Kirbis and colleagues; more info on program and other participants below mmg.mpg.de/workshops-conferences/2018/empire-off-center

2018 10 19Verschwindende Vermächtnisse 3 opens at Natural History Collections Halle/Saale— new exhibition in the cycle "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest"

Opening: 19 October 2018, 19h00 Zentralmagazin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen Martin-Luther-Universität Halle/Wittenberg Domplatz 4 D-06108 Halle/Saale The third iteration of the exhibition is approaching fast! Save the date for the opening of Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald [Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest] in the Natural History Collections of Martin Luther University in Halle/Saale, which will be installed throughout the entire building—which is normally not accessible to the public. The exhibition presents contemporary artworks and curatorial assemblages that renounce a romantic notion of untouched nature. Fifteen installations, photographs, sculptures, and moving-image works (including eight new commissions) draw connections between Alfred Russel Wallace’s nineteenth-century expeditions to Amazonia and Southeast Asia and current urgencies of ecological decline. Although the exhibition follows selected historical traces and archival records, Disappearing Legacies is not a “great man of science” biographical retrospective. Instead, by appropriating certain formal elements of this exhibition trope, the project considers how colonial natural history collections can be mobilized, disassembled, framed, and read in ways that enable a discussion of urgent ecological and systemic injustices today—whether in the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, or Plantationocene. “Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest” asks: Can—and if so, how can—a colonial archive become a departure point for a conversation about other ways of knowing, reading, and sensing the heterogeneity of nature as it is voiced by international artists, scientists, and activists? In response to this question, the exhibition celebrates diversity and biodiversity, challenging aesthetic and agricultural monocultures by interrogating the modern colonial legacies that perpetuate epistemicide and ecocide. What kinds of narration can we re-activate or invent? Which human and non-human ways of life are fostered, cultivated, or engendered elsewhere, and how can we support these in defiance of the continued impoverishment of the world? Participating artists: Maria Thereza Alves Ari Bayuaji Bik Van der Pol Ursula Biemann Shannon Lee Castleman/Migrant Ecologies Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen Mark Dion Radjawali Irendra / Akademi Drone Indonesia Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi Barbara Marcel Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vu PetaBencana.id SHIMURAbros Paulo Tavares / autonoma Robert Zhao Renhui / The Institute of Critical Zoologists reassemblingnature.org/vv3

2018 08 24
The World as Forest: bilingual exhibition guide
— in print & pdf format

The free guide accompanying the three-part travelling exhibition “Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald” [Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest] is now available! This publication offers contextualizations of all participating artists and their works as well as a selection of related essays and interviews. Edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin, with additional texts by Maria Thereza Alves, Andrew Berry, Matthias Glaubrecht, Felix Sattler, Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin, Frank Steinheimer, Zenzi Suhadi, Paulo Tavares, Anna Tsing. German translations by Anna-Sophie Springer & Monika Springer. Design by Wolfgang Hückel & Katharina Tauer. Published by K. Verlag. Made possible by a publication grant of the Graham Foundation. PDF

2018 08 25
Thinking Like a Mountain (2018) by Alexander Hick—double film screening during finnissage of The World as Forest

The Berlin iteration of Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest ends with a screening of Alexander Hick’s film Thinking Like a Mountain. Combining essayistic and documentary styles, the film draws a portrait of the extraordinary resistance of the Arhuaco Indigenous people of the high Sierra Nevada in Colombia. The presentation of the film at Tieranatomisches Theater is the team premiere in Berlin after the film has only be screened once before at Visions du reel in Nyon. Screenings are at 21h00 and 23h00—first come first get a place. Please note that you need a ticket for the Long Night of the Museums that is also happening tonight throughout the city. interdisciplinary-laboratory.hu-berlin.de/en/content/how-earth-mit-der-erde-denken Trailer flippingthecoin.de/films July 2018

July 2018
Exhibition as Philosophical Problem / Die Ausstellung als philosophisches Problem
— essay by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin in Grazer Architecture Magazine

In this essay we ask: “How to present and disseminate […] knowledge as a way of co-producing it? Exhibition is thus a philosophical problem that travels along with the thematic or conceptual research we do; what, when, and how to exhibit a given set of concerns or ways of working, of various epistemological trajectories or commitments, of intersecting or interfering versions of a given narrative? […] We approach exhibitions, like any other philosophical problem, as a way of interfacing with what we don’t yet know how to present, but that we nevertheless feel requires a form for exposition.” GAM 14 “Exhibiting Matters” was edited by Milica Tomic and Dubravka Sekulic. With contributions by Bart De Baere, Ivana Bago, Ana Bezić, Nicolas Bourriaud, Maria Bremer, Ekaterina Degot, Ana Dević, Anselm Franke, Andrew Herscher, Christian Inderbitzin, Branislav Jakovljević, Sami Khatib, Wilfried Kuehn, Nicole Lai Yi-Hsin, Bruno Latour, Ana María León, Armin Linke, Antonia Majača, Doreen Mende, Ana Miljački, Museum of American Art in Berlin, Vincent Normand, Christoph Walter Pirker, Dubravka Sekuli, Antje Senarclens de Grancy, Katharina Sommer, Anna-Sophie Springer, Barbara Steiner, Kate Strain, Žiga Testen, Milica Tomić, Etienne Turpin, and What, How & for Whom/WHW. gam.tugraz.at Read the full essay online (EN/DE)

2018 04 28 – 08 25
HOW ON EARTH?
— discourse program at Tieranatomisches Theater

Many inherited images of nature are no longer adequate given the realities of mass extinction, anthropogenic climate change, and deforestation. Have current forms of land use transformation, ecological disturbance, and species extermination produced a troubled new natural history? The discursive program How on Earth? addresses this and other urgent questions about nature, colonialism, and care in the Anthropocene through a series of lectures, discussions, screenings, and guided tours. 24/08 from pulp and paper 19h30 Publication talks with Armin Linke, Doreen Mende, Dubravka Sekulic, Milica Tomic (GAM, TU Graz), Leah Whitman-Salkin (Harvard Design Magazin), and others [en] >>>> detailed program here 25/08 thinking with the earth During the Long Night of the Museums**: 18h00 Exhibition guided tour [de] 19h30 Lecture by Hannah Meszaros-Martin (Goldsmiths) [en] 20h15 Lecture by Kenny Cupers (Universität Basel) [en] 21h00 Screening of Thinking Like A Mountain, 2018 [de with en subtitles] followed by a Q&A with the director Alexander Hick and a closing panel with all guests, exhibition curators, and Anselm Franke [en] 23h00 Exhibition guided tour [de] >>>> detailed program here **a ticket for the Long Nights is required Past events: 28/04 inhabiting nature 15–16h00 Curators’ tours [de/en] 16–19h00 Artists’ talks by Barbara Marcel, Crystelle Vũ, and others; followed by lectures by Shannon Mattern (New School) and Birgit Schneider (Potsdam University) [en] >>>> detailed program here 09/06 imaging & imagining nature During the Long Night of Science: 19h00 Curators’ tours [de/en] and artist’s talk by Maria Thereza Alves [en] 23h00 Exhibition guided tour [de] >>>> detailed program here 26/06 consuming a planet 20h00 Lectures by researcher Seth Denizen, Max Haiven (Lakehead University), and Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths) [en]; followed by a screening of Europium, 2014 [en with de subtitles] and a panel discussion with the artist/director Lisa Rave [en] >>>> detailed program here 03/07 becoming extinct 19h30 “Provisioning Crows: Ecologies of Hope in the Mariana Islands,” lecture by environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren (University of Sydney); followed by a screening of Point of No Return, 2015 [en with de subtitles] and a panel discussion with the artist/director Antje Engelmann [en] >>>> detailed program here 12/08 replicating nature 10 – 19h30 Day trip excursion with Bik Van Der Pol to the artificial Vesuvio at Schloß Wörlitz and the Naumann Ornithological Collection at Museum Köthen [registration required] >>>> detailed program here Entry to the exhibition and the discursive program is free. For events taking place during the Long Night of Science (9 June, 17–24h00) and the Long Night of the Museums (25 August, 18–2h00) separate tickets for the Long Nights are required. [Photo: Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vũ, “The Extinction Gong,” 2017/18 in the auditorium of the Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin; documentation by Michael Pfisterer.]

2018 07 20
VV exhibition review in HyperAllergic — Ben Valentine writes about "The Extinction Gong" by Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vũ

“The automation of [Oliver & Vũ’s] Extinction Gong troubles the direness of the event it commemorates. My initial reaction to the installation was that this is a tacky ceremony for such a bleak event. How can we not even muster the energy to give a heartfelt elegy by voice or hand? But then, isn’t it so fitting too? The technology and automation remind us that capitalism has gone on autopilot, and must expand, develop, mine, and drill, baby, drill, ever more, no matter the cost. Maybe we’ll walk ourselves into extinction playing Pokemon Go. ‘So precarious and complex is our planetary situation today,’ Vũ and Oliver told me, ‘that in order to understand our way through this, we have to heavily lean on our our technology. The irony of a computer controlled instrument signaling the rate of extinction is something we appreciate about the piece.’” (Photo above by Michael Pfisterer for Reassembling the Natural) hyperallergic.com/memorializing-the-accelerating-loss-of-planetary-life

2018 06 18
VV exhibition review by Adela Yawitz
— in HyperAllergic

“The current exhibition on view is ‘Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest,’ curated by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin. Their trilogy of exhibitions in natural science museums across Germany is based on extensive research of received Western knowledge and ideas about nature, which they contextualize with parallel, post-colonial narratives, as well as with contemporary art. The exhibition at the anatomical theater unpacks the Western projection of the rainforest as an image of wild growth, devoid of humans, an environment so diverse and bursting with life forms that it exceeds man’s scientific categorizations. It frames the rainforest as a Western fantasy land, born together with Colonial explorations, which provides endless ‘material’ for the botanist, the explorer, or the artist. The exhibition contextualizes the rainforest in different ways, for instance, by making connections between influential German evolutionary scientists and their ties to German colonies in Papua New Guinea.” (Photo above by Martina Pozzan for Reassembling the Natural) hyperallergic.com/curators-test-ties-between-science-art-and-the-colonial-imagination

2018 05 03
Goldsmiths Warden's Annual Public Engagement Award 2018
— Anna-Sophie receives the Commendation award for "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest"

Every year, Pat Loughrey, the Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, distributes a series of Public Engagement Awards in three main categories. These awards recognize and celebrate the excellent work researchers at all career stages do with members of the public, whether they’re sharing ground-breaking findings with new audiences or collaborating with the public throughout their research. In Spring 2018, Anna-Sophie Springer was selected to receive the “Commendation” in the Postgraduate Researcher category for her work as co-curator of the first round of the exhibition “Verschwindende Vermächtniss:Die Welt als Wald” at the Zoological Museum Hamburg. The Winner in this category is Tom Keene for his project “Database Estate.” The Winner in the Established Researcher category is Prof Jennifer Gabrys for “Deptfort Data Stories.” Quoting Warden Pat Loughrey’s Welcome Address: “An exceptional range of innovative activities and projects were nominated by Goldsmiths staff, showcasing different approaches to engaging the public with research and practice. Our researchers worked with organisations like the BFI, the Labour Party, the Zoological Museum Hamburg and Parliament to engage diverse audiences through film, performance, art and citizen science. There was a real sense that researchers, partners and the public benefited from this work, demonstrating how research in the arts, humanities, social sciences and computing can create positive change in the world. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of the nominees, whose work with the public is a real asset to Goldsmiths and an example to our community, and beyond.” 2018-Wardens-Annual-Public-Engagement-Awards-programme.pdf gold.ac.uk/research/about/public-engagement/awards

2018 04 26 – 08 26
Verschwindende Vermächtnisse 2 opens at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin
— new exhibition in the cycle "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest"

Opening: 26 April 2018, 19h00 Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T) Raum für forschende Ausstellungspraxis Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Philippstraße 12/13 10115 Berlin Please join us for the opening of the second iteration of Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald in the former animal anatomical theater of Berlin’s Humboldt-University, the Tieranatomisches Theater. 160 years after the publication of the theory of evolution by natural selection, this ambitious exhibition departs from the expeditions of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century to examine the current disappearance of rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America. The artistic positions and curatorial assemblages presented in this exhibition renounce a romantic image of untouched nature, and instead critically inquire into the legacies resulting from the relentless destruction of highly complex ecosystems. In addition to contemporary art, zoological and botanical objects from the collections of the Humboldt-University and the University of Hamburg can also be seen. The exhibition runs until the end of August and includes the discursive program HOW ON EARTH? beginning 28 April (details above). The participating artists are: Maria Thereza Alves Ari Bayuaji Bik Van der Pol Shannon Lee Castleman/Migrant Ecologies Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen Mark Dion Katie Holten Radjawali Irendra / Akademi Drone Indonesia Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi Barbara Marcel Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vu PetaBencana.id SHIMURAbros Paulo Tavares / autonoma Robert Zhao Renhui / The Institute of Critical Zoologists reassemblingnature.org/vv2 PDF Invitation Getting There

2018 06 09
Posthuman/Nature
— a panel discussion with Isabelle Doucet, Paulo Tavares, and Etienne Turpin as part of "Architecture and/for the Environment, CCA Montreal

The multidisciplinary research Mellon-project Architecture and/for the Environment at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal (2017–18) proposes to rethink the discipline of architecture by offering a different understanding of how architecture and the environment have been co-produced. While cross-disciplinary attention, including that of architecture, has focused on the new realities of the Anthropocene, architecture’s complex historical relationship to nature has yet to be surveyed. We fear that the pragmatic, techno-utopian, or even environmentalist stances that have monopolized the subject do not equip us to face the challenges ahead, and that we must pursue a more critical engagement. With Architecture and/for the Environment, we move beyond the narratives of inevitability and apocalypse encouraged by a positivistic discourse on architecture’s environmental history. This three-day workshop event includes public presentations by Isabelle Doucet, Paulo Tavares, Etienne Turpin and others. [ more ]

2018 04 19
Islands of Palm Oil by Armin Linke and Giulia Bruno
— Screening and discussion at Goethe-Institute Jakarta

Spending time on Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, photographer and filmmaker Armin Linke—together with his colleagues Giulia Bruno, Anna-Sophie Springer, and Etienne Turpin—conducted numerous interviews with local residents, plantation workers, small landholders, environmentalists, government officials, and scientists. The result is a cinematic document about the rapid expansion of the oil palm complex in Indonesia. The film was made for the exhibition cycle “Disappearing Legaces: The World as Forest” and the event is its first screening in Indonesia. [95 min, English and Indonesian with English subtitles] [ more ]

2018 03 26
Anna Tsing: The Sociality of Birds
— evening lecture in the exhibition "Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald"

26 March 2018 19h00–21h00 Zoologisches Museum Hamburg Centrum für Naturkunde (CeNak) Bundesstrasse 52 20146 Hamburg The Sociality of Birds: Reflections on Ontological Edge Effects Lecture by Prof. Anna Tsing How might quite different kinds of people appreciate birds? And in what ways do birds appreciate (or refuse the attentions of) people? This talk reflects on the sociality of birds from the perspective of an anthropologist, that is, a representative of a field that once only studied humans but now finds itself needing to consider social relations as a more-than-human affair. Anthropologists have worried that in studying nonhuman socialities, we find ourselves ever more entangled with the Western imperial projects to which the field has hoped to show alternatives. At the same time, to ignore nonhumans as social beings blithely ignores Anthropocene destruction, which haunts our species too. This talk explores what it would mean to take overlapping—but non-identical—forms of curiosity as a starting point for getting to know birds. Traveling to the Raja Ampat islands of West Papua, Indonesia, in the company of bird experts, the author watched birds and villagers and birdwatchers in their common muddling together. One of the surprises of the trip was the enthusiasm of villagers for showing international guests their local birds. Where did this enthusiasm come from, she asked, and how did it interact both with birds’ own agendas in villages and with the international political economy of birdwatching? Exploring such questions leads us into new forms of collaboration across the humanities, arts, and natural sciences: collaborations we may need to survive the Anthropocene. To recognize the dance of more-than-human sociality, the author suggests, requires attention both to varied agendas people have with birds and to those birds have with people. Anna Tsing is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also Niels Bohr Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark where she co-directs Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA). She is the author of a series of books from Princeton University Press, including The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015); Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2007), and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place (1993). Tsing is also the co-editor of several publications including, more recently, Words in Motion: Towards a Global Lexicon (Duke University Press) and Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). The German translation of her mushroom book, Der Pilz am Ende der Welt, is fresh of the press at the Berlin-based publisher Matthes & Seitz. The event will be moderated by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin; it will be held in English with simultaneous German translation. Doors of the exhibition open at 17h00. RSVP for the event via info[at]reassemblingnature[dot]org is kindly required until 20 March. Image credit: Red birds-of-paradise, Waigeo Island, Indonesia. Photo by Yulia Bereshpolova, December 2017.

2018 03 23
Under Construction: Natural History Futures — a keynote by Anna-Sophie Springer at Timespan Scotland's "Practicing Deep Time" symposium

Practicing Deep Time is a two-day event focusing on Deep Time in arts and heritage: a one-day multi-disciplinary symposium based at the arts organization Timespan in Helmsdale, Northern Scotland, followed by a “field day,” exploring Deep Time concepts across East Sutherland and Caithness. On Friday, Timespan will host a day of talks and workshops. Here, Anna-Sophie Springer will present a keynote drawing on recent work that aims to create sustained conversations about the future of “natural history” through exhibition-led enquiry bringing together natural history collections and contemporary art. A cross-disciplinary roundtable will consider particular issues associated with the communication and interpretation of Deep Time subjects by asking: What methods can we employ to overcome the perceived unknowability of distant pasts and futures? Other presenters include Gavin McGregor, Nashin Mahtani, and Sam Nightingale; the event program also includes a screening of the film Trace Evidence (2016) by Susan Schuppli. timespan.org.uk/explore/north/practicing-deep-time

2018 03 12
Designing the Anthropocene — a lecture by Etienne Turpin at the 5th Annual Architecture Lectures, TU Graz

A day-long event with lecture presentations by Elke Delugan-Meissl, Steven Delva Jonas Elding, Andras Palffy, Ingrid Paoletti, Stefan Peters, Allen Sayegh, Barbara Steiner, Ines Weizman, and Etienne Turpin. Graz Architecture Lectures 2018 Kronesgasse 5 / 1. OG 8010 Graz Watch lecture

2018 02 02
VV exhibition review by Regine Debatty — on "We Make Money Not Art" blog

A review and a virtual exhibition tour with many photos of “Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest” at the Hamburg Zoological Museum. By Regine Debatty, read on via the link below we-make-money-not-art.com/disappearing-legacies-the-world-as-forest

2018 02 01
Françoise Vergès: Politics of Forgetfulness
— keynote moderated by Anna-Sophie Springer for Transmediale Festival Berlin

“In discussions of technological progress, what are the affected territories, populations and workforces that tend to be forgotten? The embrace of Western Promethean thinking and the belief that “Man” can invent a solution to any problem always seem to leave certain questions unanswered. When different ongoing forms of exploitation—of both humans and resources—are not addressed, dehistoricization and universalism emerge and conceal racialized politics and economic interests. To discuss the long-standing interconnection of colonialism, racism, and capitalism, Françoise Vergès suggests the reading of a different history, that of the “racial capitalocene,” which can challenge Western approaches of knowing. In her keynote at transmediale 2018, Vergès will examine old and new forms of dispossession and colonization, reconnecting past, present, and future. Turning to intersectional, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist methodologies, she will highlight the need for a new politics of the possible—and a politics of lives that matter.” Françoise Vergès’s lecture “Politics of Forgetfulness” will take place in the Auditorium of Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, on 1 February 2018 at 18h00. It will be moderated by Anna-Sophie Springer and accompanied by German live translation archive.transmediale.de/politics-of-forgetfulness Watch lecture Listen to German simultaneous translation

2017 12 01
Touching Nature
— talk by Anna-Sophie Springer in Tejal Shah's exhibition "Unbecoming" at Kunsthaus Hamburg

On Friday evening, Anna-Sophie will head from CeNak to Kunsthaus Hamburg where she was invited to respond to Tejal Shah’s current solo exhibition Unbecoming by. If you are free and nearby it would be great to see you there at 19h00! kunsthaushamburg.de/veranstaltungen

2017 11 20–22
Autonomy in the Anthropocene

Invited presentations by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin about Reassembling the Natural at the AHA! Festival 2017 “Autonomy” at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg ahafestival.se

2017 11 16
Exhibition as Philosophical Problem
— Etienne Turpin is a speaker at the symposium "Artificial Nature: Potential and Conflict in the Age of the Anthropocene" at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen

With presentations by artists, researchers and art professionals, this year’s Overgaden conference entitled “Artificial Nature: Potential and Conflict in the Age of the Anthropocene” investigates the relationship between art, culture, and nature from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Key questions include whether the concept of the Anthropocene contributes anything radically new, and if so, asks in what sense it possesses a critical and transformative potential? What understandings of nature are prevalent in artistic and curatorial practices, and is it possible—or even useful—to distinguish between nature and culture? One week after the opening of the new exhibition “Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald,” Etienne Turpin will present the project in a philosophical lecture focusing on curatorial views of nature, and also probing the significance of artists and cultural institutions in tackling the urgent environmental challenges facing society today. Speakers include: Jacob Wamberg, Professor in Art History at Aarhus University, Denmark; Simon Starling, artist, UK; T.J. Demos, Professor in Visual Culture and History of Art, University of Santa Cruz; Cecilia Jönsson, artist, Sweden/Norway; Andreas Malm, Associate Senior Lecturer in Human Ecology at University of Lund; Mickey Gjerris, Associate Professor in Bioethics, Denmark; Jacob Lillemose, Curator and Founder of X & Beyond, Denmark; Nina Möllers, Curator and Researcher at Rachel Carsons Center and Deutsches Museum, Munich; Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz, Curators and founders of Art Laboratory Berlin; and Adam Bencard, Researcher and Curator at Medical Museion, Denmark). The conference is moderated by biologist Hanne Strager, former Head of Exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. youtube.com/watch overgaden.org/-lectures-artificial-nature-potential-and-conflict-in-the-age-of-the-anthropocene

2019 11 08
VV exhibition review in Die Welt— article by Julia Polke entitled "Grasping Nature as Culture"

“Der Wald als Kulturlandschaft: Eine einzigartige Ausstellung im Zoologischen Museum im Centrum für Naturkunde in Hamburg versammelt 13 künstlerische Positionen, die mit den Tierpräparaten und Objekten der Schausammlung korrespondieren….” welt.de/hamburg/article170497688

Productions of Nature

Necroaesthetics: Denaturalising the Collection