Essays, conversations, selected texts, and a rich collection of thought-provoking artworks celebrate a revolution in bio art. Expertly designed by Omnivore and printed on special papers, including chlorophyll cover and crush citrus and crush cocoa pages.
The texts and artworks in Symbionts provoke a necessary conversation about our species and its relation to the planet. Are we merely “mammalian weeds,” as evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis put it? Or are we partners in producing and maintaining the biosphere, as she also suggested? Symbionts reflects on a recent revolution in bio art that departs from the late-1990s code-oriented experiments to embrace entanglement and symbiosis (“with-living”). Combining documentation of contemporary artworks with texts by leading thinkers, Symbionts, which accompanies an exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center, offers an expansive view of humanity’s place on the planet.
Color reproductions document works by international artists that respond to the revelation that planetary microbes construct and maintain our biosphere. A central essay by coeditor Caroline Jones sets their work in the context of larger discussions around symbiosis; additional essays, an edited roundtable discussion, and selected excerpts follow. Contributors explore, among other things, the resilient ecological knowledge of indigenous scholars and artists, and “biofiction,” a term coined by Jones to describe the work of such theoretical biologists as Jacob von Uexküll as well as the witty parafictions of artist Anicka Yi. A playful glossary puts scientific terms in conversation with cultural ones.
Λ (Lambda) is an artist book by Micol Assaël which collects a series of 72 drawings made by the artist starting in 2011 as a reflection on light.
The work well exemplifies Assaël’s interest in natural phenomena and in their unpredictability which often makes it impossible for the artist to control the work. The drawings “describe” biomorphic figures inscribed within circles, and are based on the attempt to define a blot of color despite its constant modification over time. Unlike previous series of drawings, Λ (Lambda) is made with orange enamel and blue ink.
The drawings, conceived to be charged with light, have been exposed to direct, very intense sources of illumination. The title Λ (Lambda) alludes to the symbol used in physics for the wavelength of light.
Motto is pleased to announce its participation to 28 November, from 26 to 28 November 2022.
28 November purveys texts (new, used, bootlegged) that relate to independence, anarchy, spaces of exception, desire, withdrawal, noncompliance, self-management, forms of identification, love.
A selection of music for the micro closed-circuit radio station broadcast during the Tirana Book Fair November 2022, this mix features sounds from:
Koray Kantarcıoğlu Ferox Maw Yannick Dauby Canon singing from MIEN (YAO) hill tribes in China, Vietnam, and Laos, released on Sublime Frequencies nula.cc Amelia Cuni Cheba Wahida Barney Wilen Sugai Ken Michel Redolfi 154 Inoyama Land
With KORAZON, we want to dive into topics previously discussed by Amauta’s writers within the current context of cultural activities no longer being subsidized by the government, but rather turned into for-profit projects. In this mag, we want to show how crucial identity and collective culture are to a country and how important it is to invest in us as a multicultural territory. This platform’s aim is to bring attention to issues that affect us as Peruvians, especially those that we hardly emphasize and pinpoint as oppressive or holding us back as a community.
Attached is a collection of texts that document a diverse range of artworks made by Jessie Bullivant (AU/FI) over the past decade. By replacing the default photographic documentation with written accounts, the artist raises questions about how immaterial artworks are preserved, accessed and ultimately remembered, allowing space for nuances often lost in photographic documentation. As an incomplete survey of the artists’ work, the book blurs the boundaries between art and its documentation, between a conventional monograph and an experimental artist’s book. It gives an exciting glimpse into a committed artistic practice tackling a variety of issues from representation, power and access to subtle social interactions.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Latefa Wiersch. Original Features”, Kunsthaus Langenthal, 25 August – 13 November 2022.
All texts and images originally published on Instagram @artpop_insta between 2018 and 2022.
The Kunsthaus Langenthal presents the first institutional solo exhibition of the work of Latefa Wiersch (*1982 in Dortmund, Germany, lives and works in Zurich). Her work is populated by liminal beings that combine elements of human and animal, plant, object, and machine, and that pupate and transform. Drawing on observations of everyday life and a provocative sense of humor, these figures tell stories about social realities and the life of the artist. Against the background of current discourses on identity, Latefa Wiersch confronts the gaps in her own history. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a performance with the Dandara Modesto and Rhoda Davids Abel.
Text & Images: Latefa Wiersch Graphic Design: Dorothee Dähler Editing: Eva-Maria Knüsel Proof Reading: Thomas Skelton-Robinson
In Nazi Germany, at least 10.000 physically and mentally disabled children and adolescents, including orphans, misfits, and other ethnic groups were murdered as part of an ideology based on social Darwinism. For the first time in history physicians, nurses, and midwives killed by lethal injection, gas poisoning or starvation. It predated the genocide of European Jewry by approximately two years. A rehearsal for the planners of the final solution. NUMB is a study of the forgotten children of World War II.
French artist duo, Wolfsko, use mediums of expression such as photography, text, drawing, painting and collage. Their work is a long study in the world of unhappy childhood, exploring themes such as love, fear, and survival. Wolfsko currently live and work in Berlin.
How lawsuits around intellectual property in Brazil and India are impacting the patentability of plants and seeds, farmers’ rights, and the public interest.
Over the past decade, legal challenges have arisen in the Global South over patents on genetically modified crops. In this ethnographic study, Karine E. Peschard explores the effects of these disputes on people’s lives, while uncovering the role of power—material, institutional, and discursive—in shaping laws and legal systems. The expansion of corporate intellectual property (IP), she shows, negatively impacts farmers’ rights and, by extension, the right to food, since small farms produce the bulk of food for domestic consumption. Peschard sees emerging a new legal common sense concerning the patentability of plant-related inventions, as well as a balance among IP, farmers’ rights, and the public interest.
Peschard examines the strengthening of IP regimes for plant varieties, the consolidation of the global biotech industry, the erosion of agrobiodiversity, and farmers’ dispossession. She shows how litigants question the legality of patents and private IP systems implemented by Monsanto for royalties on three genetically modified crop varieties, Roundup Ready soybean in Brazil and Bt cotton and Bt eggplant in India. Peschard argues that these private IP systems have rendered moot domestic legislation on plant variety protection and farmers’ rights. This unprecedented level of corporate concentration in such a vital sector raises concerns over the erosion of agricultural biodiversity, farmers’ rights and livelihoods, food security, and, ultimately, the merits of extending IP rights to higher life forms such as plants.
Local Stickerbook is an independent magazine exhibiting works of contemporary Ukrainian artists. For each edition, around twenty artists are selected to represent their creations through the sticker format. The project was launched in February, 2021 as an initiative of Kyiv-based artists and curators. Since that time, the team successfully hosted several multi-format events uniting various local musicians, artists and enthusiasts to explore metamodernistic ideas and approaches.
The Local Stickerbook team also provides artists and their families with financial aid. The team intends to create a special financial support foundation giving a part of the profits and donations to the Ukrainian artists in need. Together we make a difference!
