The Zooetics+ Symposium

The Zooetics+ Symposium at MIT concludes a 5 year-long research project, A___Zooetics, and opens a new research program focusing on sympoiesis. A___Zooetics was initiated in 2014 to explore intersections of human and nonhuman knowledge spheres through a series of collaborations, bringing artistic experimental practices into scientific fields and vice versa, via symposia, lectures, workshops and exhibitions.

The 2018 Zooetics+ Symposium, hosted by MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), invites renowned scholars, artists, philosophers, scientists, anthropologists and cultural theorists to address cohabitation of human and other forms of life as an urgent issue that unfolds through a variety of discourses: Indigenous and vernacular knowledge, science and technology studies, anthropology, human-animal studies and posthumanism, among others. The core of the program concerns the advancement of research, pedagogy and the presentation of future interspecies ecologies, and the relation between ecosystemic thinking and artistic imagination. How can A___Zooetics help to explore and define new habits of thought that allow us to think sympoietically?

Zooetics+ is part of ACT’s program recognizing the 50th anniversary of the founding of the renowned Center for Advanced Visual Studies, a predecessor to ACT.

The 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+ is 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.

Speakers: 
Emmanuel Alloa, University of St.Galen / Judith Barry, MIT ACT / Caitlin Berrigan, NYU Tisch / Chiara Bottici, The New School for Social Research / Mario Caro, MIT ACT / Heather Davis, McGill University / Corinne Diserens, curator / Erin Genia (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate), MIT ACT / Scott Gilbert, Swarthmore College and University of Helsinki / Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, artist / Nuno Gomes Loureiro, MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering / Larissa Harris, Queens Museum, New York / Stefan Helmreich, MIT Anthropology / Caroline A. Jones, MIT Architecture / Richard Kearney, Boston College / Sheila Kennedy, MIT Architecture / Kite (Oglala Lakota), Concordia University / Courtney Leonard (Shinnecock), artist / Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Columbia University / Sophia Roosth, Harvard University / Kristupas Sabolius, Vilnius University / Florian Schneider, NTNU, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art / Kim TallBear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), University of Alberta / Cary Wolfe, Rice University

Free entry. Please check here for schedules and registration information.

Organizers:
Gediminas Urbonas (ACT), Nomeda Urbonas (ACT, and NTNU), Viktorija Siaulyte (Jutempus), Kristupas Sabolius (Vilnius University), Laura Knott (ACT), Lars Bang Larsen (Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm), Laura Serejo Genes (ACT).

A___Zooetics is part of the Outreach and Education Programme of Frontiers in Retreat project (EACEA 2013-1297) and is funded with support from the European Commission as well as Lithuanian Council for Culture. The Symposium is co-produced by Jutempus Interdisciplinary Art Program and sponsored, in addition, by the Office of the Dean, School of Architecture + Planning, MIT.

Sponsors:
Nordic Culture Fund / The Danish Art Council / Goethe-Institut Boston / swissnex Boston / MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) / AC/E Acción Cultural Española / Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) / MIT Committee on Race and Diversity / Diversity Office, SA+P / Pro Helvetia / Office for Contemporary Art Norway