[-empyre-] AMAZON IS BURNING
Shu Lea Cheang
shulea at earthlink.net
Mon Sep 16 23:39:02 AEST 2019
oh, dear Margaretha
I apologize, yes, I did revise to these keywords...
amazon is burning. on forest, machines, interspecies, interstellar, plantationocene, cows,
soybeans and global food/trade politics
Aya, so many versions at work, i posted the older one.
I correct.
let me bring up this recent (2019) post-
Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway
and Anna Tsing
https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/
a good pot-mix.
best
sl
On 16.09.19 14:04, margaretha haughwout wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> I write from Oneida territory in what is currently central New York
> within the so-called United States. The Oneida are one of the 5
> nations that comprise the Haudenosaunee confederacy, and this land
> from which I write has never been ceded. The apocalypse began here 500
> years ago.
>
> ...
>
> Amazon is burning. forest, cows, soybeans, machines, trades, global
> food/trade politics
>
> This week's discussants hope to think together about disasters, and
> disaster capitalism/ vs. possibilities in ruins: how, as Oliver
> Kellhammer puts it, ruins are the porous interface between imagining
> possible futures on one hand and disaster capitalism on the other.
> Here we must think hard about the relationships between Amazon fires,
> opportunities for soybean production as food and feed, and cattle
> ranching (noting the "soy-cattle pasture-deforestation dynamic"). We
> must think hard about what emerges intentionally and unintentionally
> from the disturbance. Soybeans (and we might think of the crop here as
> cheap energy, nitrogen fixer, endocrine disruptor, as allergen
> generator), and cows (as frontier, as cheap energy, cheap labor, as
> domesticating 'wilderness') are intentionally introduced of course,
> and they are implicated in the larger dynamics of global capital, and
> the processes of what Jason Moore calls "making cheap." Specifically
> they are implicated in the trade poitics of the moment: Trump's trade
> war with China. Soybeans were the biggest export from the US to China;
> new tariffs position Brazil to take over the drop in US shipments.
>
> ...What other species emerge and travel from the fires? What viruses
> hop, what ghosts.
>
> ...This week, let's also ask, how can we do time and dreams in
> relation to food/ trade/ politics. To return, always to Benjamin's 9th
> Thesis. How do we stop the storm of progress and tend to the
> catastrophe? What are the practices that change time? Fabi Borges will
> share with us (among other amazing interstellar work she is doing)
> indigenous wisdom she has learned from the Amazon, asking, how do we
> stop dreaming the same dream? How do we imagine more worlds than one?
>
> ...What are the ways that we know? Using interstellar satellite
> imagery to know about fires, we use technology that itself emerges
> from coloniality and ways of knowing from above, as if there can be a
> whole, a point of neutrality not implicated in totalizing regimes of
> control. How are we caught up and inadvertently worlding with this
> technology -- can this entanglement make more than one world? More
> than one dream?
>
> ...I'd love to ask the discussants and invite the readership to
> imagine together what a revolt of unpaid machines and unpaid natures
> could look like. What plants can disrupt monocrop cultivation of
> soybeans? What kin do soybeans thrive with? What invasive species will
> act as a scab on the scorched earth? What technologies can be hijacked
> for different ends than global capital and control.
>
> ...Always, we must recognize who and what worlds are lost. The
> indigenous (Munduruku, Huni Kuin, Xingu to name 3 of over 300 in
> Brazil) and their kin. The marmosets, the spider monkeys, the tamarin,
> the jaguars, the sloths, frogs, lizards, parakeets, mahogany,
> ironwood, brazil nuts, cocoa, passiflora vines, orchids, bromeliads....
>
> A few thoughts to begin.
>
> Amazon is burning. forest, cows, soybeans, machines, trades, global
> food/trade politics
>
> (Note: originally the title She Lea gave me was: "amazon is burning.
> on forest, machines, interspecies, interstellar, plantationocene,
> cows, soybeans and global food/trade politics," and after agonizing
> over it, now I realize I am somewhat attached to it. Consider the
> additional terms stars in a constellation that are usually hard to see)
>
> ...
>
> I am honored to have a set of artists and thinkers with me this week
> to work on remembering together -- re-member-ing as reassembling a
> body, reassembling worlds. A forest.
>
> I like to mix up the format for -empyre- a little, and so I'm
> introducing a *caravan* of creative thinkers, and Shu Lea will add as
> the week goes on. This week will need a LOT of voices, to inch toward
> the catastrophe, to try and turn away from the future, to deal with
> NOW. So I hope the readership will feel very invited to participate.
> Needed.
>
> Fabi Borges (BR)
> Fabiane M. Borges: Acts at the intersection between clinic, art and
> technology. She works as a Psychologist (in person and online) and as
> an essayist, having written and organized publications between
> academic journals, collections and personal books. She articulates two
> international networks/festivals: Technoshamanism (technology &
> ancestry) and Intergalactic Commune (art & space sciences). She has a
> Post-phd in Visual Arts at EBA / UFRJ - School of Fine Arts, Federal
> University of Rio de Janeiro / 2016-2018. She did a Phd in Visual Arts
> at Goldsmiths University of London / 2011, and currently she is doing
> two post-phd: one at ECA / USP (School of Communication and Arts at
> the University of São Paulo / 2019) the other at ETE / INPE (Space
> Engineering and Technology at the National Institute for Space
> Research / 2019), both dedicated to art and science focused on space
> projects that also include terrestrial systems and Philosophy of
> science. Since July 2019, she organizes SACIE (Subjectivity, Art and
> Space Sciences) a research program and artistic residencies in the
> Brazilian space program (INPE), where she develops a series of
> activities focused on Space Culture. She is the organizer of
> Extremophilia magazine, launched in 2018. As her academic background
> is in Psychology, with a master's degree and phd in Clinical
> Psychology (PUC / SP), all her work has a focus on the production of
> subjectivity. Acting on the frontier between Art and Clinic, having
> developed several immersive programs focused on dream and imaginary
> levels, operating with fiction, speculation, creation. Some of her
> actions have been supported by institutions such as Goethe Institute,
> SESC, MAC, MAST, MAR, Museum of Tomorrow, Valongo Observatory,
> Ibirapuera Planetarium, Nucleus of Arts and New Organisms PPGAV / UFRJ
> - (Brazil), Center for Contemporary Art (Ecuador), Aarhus University -
> Department of Information Studies & Digital Design (Denmark), STWST /
> Ars Electronica (Austria), SenseLab Concordia University (Canada),
> XenoEntities (Germany), Transmediale (Germany), Grow Tottenham, Si
> Shang Art Museum (China), etc. She lives in São Paulo in a collective
> house that plants organic, organizes parties, concerts, meetings,
> workshops, etc (Casa Japuanga, SP).
>
> Amanda McDonald Crowley (USA)
> Amanda McDonald Crowley is an independent cultural worker and curator.
> Amanda’s work has largely been at the intersection of art + technology
> working with artists and groups who have a research based practice;
> and current research interests include #artfoodtech #growfoodmakeart.
> Amanda develops platforms to generate dialogue, bringing together
> artists with professionals and amateurs from varied disciplines, and
> creating space for audience engagement. In recent years Amanda has
> developed projects with Kulturföreningen Triennal (Malmo), Bronx Arts
> Alliance, YMPJ (Bronx), New Media Scotland / Edinburgh Science
> Festival (Edinburgh), Pixelache (Helsinki), PointB (Brooklyn), Bemis
> Center (Omaha). Amanda has curatorial and advisor roles on Mary
> Mattingly’s Swale (NYC), Di Mainstone’s Human Harp (UK), Juanli
> Carrion’s OSS Project (NYC), Shu Lea Cheang’s CycleX (NY) and Vibha
> Galhotra’s S.O.U.L Foundation (Delhi), and in summer 2019 Amanda
> curated Amy Khoshbin’s pop up tattoo parlor in a hotel room for
> Detroit Art Week in a project that addressed gun violence in America.
> Amanda has previously worked with Eyebeam art + technology center NY,
> Australian Network for Art and Technology, ISEA2004, Finland, Adelaide
> Festival 2002 and has done curatorial residencies at Helsinki
> International Artists Program (FI), Santa Fe Art Institute (US),
> Bogliasco Foundation (IT), Sarai New Media Institute (IN), and Banff
> Center for the Arts (CA). publicartaction.net <http://publicartaction.net>
>
> Oliver Kellhammer (USA)
> Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, writer, and researcher, who seeks,
> through his botanical interventions and social art practice, to
> demonstrate nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. Recent
> work has focused on the psychosocial effects of climate change,
> decontaminating polluted soil, reintroducing prehistoric trees to
> landscapes impacted by industrial logging, and cataloging the
> biodiversity of brownfields. He is currently a lecturer in sustainable
> systems at Parsons in NYC.
>
> He has lectured and given artists talks on bio-art, ecological design,
> urban ecology and permaculture at universities and cultural
> institutions throughout North America and abroad, including New
> School, NYU, Rensselaer Polytechnic, OTIS College, University of
> Oregon, Emily Carr University, Smith College, University of British
> Columbia, Bainbridge Graduate Institute, University of Windsor, Aalto
> University (Finland) Tohoku University (Japan).
>
> Escher Tsai (TW)
> Escher Tsai, New Media Art Artist, Producer, Creative Director of
> Dimension Plus,
> Director of Arts and Technology: Creative Innovation and Counseling
> Project, Production supervisor of “3x3x6”Taiwan Exhibition in 58th
> Venice Biennale. He devotes himself into open culture and new media
> art research, promotion and creation. He was project manager of Acer
> Digital Art Centre, planner of many new media arts creation and
> centre, host of Digital art exchange platform.
>
> Established by Escher Tsai and Keith Lam, well-known curator and
> artist from Taiwan and Hong Kong, Dimension Plus is a creative team
> that devotes themselves to the interactive digital environment. We are
> constantly been generating new ideas that deal with digital and analog
> technologies. We also dedicate ourselves to digital art education and
> environment change. http://dimensionplus.co/,
> http://www.dimensionplus.co/en/projects/soybean.html, (see also:
> http://www.makery.info/2019/09/10/les-futurs-du-soja-nourrissent-le-debat-en-marge-dars-electronica/?fbclid=IwAR0zdRyzTktIVHHOsXsM1C1JHgec0eg5E7Yvz0g0JO-W0UDRa-AEZtDFRCE)
>
> Dan Phiffer (USA)
> Dan Phiffer is a software developer and artist who builds web-based
> tools for the American Civil Liberties Union. His previous job was
> working on an open data gazetteer called Who’s On First (part of the
> open source mapping company Mapzen). This Fall he’s teaching a
> hacktivism course at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has started
> organizing with Extinction Rebellion in the New York Capital Region.
>
> Dawn Weleski (USA)
> Dawn Weleski’s art practice administers a political stress test,
> antagonizing routine cultural behavior by re-purposing underground
> brawls, revolutionary protests, and political offices as
> transformative social stages. Recent projects include The Black Draft
> (with Justin Strong), a live
> mock sports draft event during which ten Black former Pittsburghers,
> from all professions, are drafted to return home and City Council
> Wrestling, a series of public wrestling matches where citizens, pro-am
> wrestlers, and city council members personified their political
> passions into wrestling characters. She co-founded and co-directs
> Conflict Kitchen (with Jon Rubin), a take-out restaurant that serves
> cuisine from countries with which the U.S. government is in conflict,
> which has been covered by over 900 international media and news
> outlets worldwide and was the North American finalist for the Second
> Annual International Award for Public Art in 2015.
>
> Weleski has exhibited at The Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; the Hammer
> Museum, Los Angeles; the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Anyang
> Public Art Project, South Korea; The CCA Wattis Institute for
> Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Project Row Houses, Houston;
> Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; Festival Belluard Bollwerk International,
> Switzerland; The Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh; Arts House,
> Melbourne; and 91mQ, Berlin; has been a resident at The
> Headlands Center for the Arts, SOMA Mexico City, and The Atlantic
> Center for the Arts; is a 2017 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
> Arts Curatorial Fellow.
>
> Currently, Weleski is NEH Visiting Assistant Professor of Art & Art
> History at Colgate University.
>
> --
> beforebefore.net <http://beforebefore.net>
> --
>
>
>
>
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