IMMUNE/ÓNÆM conversations: Ecology-as-intersectionality

With the melting of ice and rising sea levels the sea has become a defining factor for a New North Atlantic, forming what has been termed an archipelagic sea-consciousness of islands. With the new waterways being drawn the outlines of the old become as prominent. In the seminar ecology-as-intersectionality (concept of T.J Demos) special focus will be put on revising and reconnecting relations as well as expanding on the connectivity of the sea and its routes with the Global South. The discursive platform is held in relation to the exhibition and research project IMMUNE/ÓNÆM. The project basis itself on the colonial report of Icelands natural resource, Travels in Iceland. The event is seen as touching upon the topics of IMMUNE/ÓNÆM while as well giving updates or thoughts on ever vibrating shifts of relations and connections to be built as we continue to learn how to assemble. 

The event takes place on April 2—3.

Program 2.04.22 at 12:00—16:00

— Andreas Hoffmann, Erik DeLuca, Wiola Ujazdowska & Bryndís Björnsdóttir - Reflection nodes

Coffee break

— Zahra Malkani & Aziz Sohail - A conversation between Zahra Malkani and Aziz Sohail'

— Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory- Video screening and talk AATOOQ (Full of blood

Program 3.04.22 at kl. 14:00—18:00

— Ruth Phoebe Tchana- Unmanaged Subarctic Grassland Growth Processes And Plant Stress Evolution In A Warmer World.

— Wiola Ujazdowska & Anna Wojtyńska - Migration and plants

Coffee break

— Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann - Inuit microbial foodways

— T.J. Demos - Ecology-as-intersectionality

Participants:

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory or Laakkuluk, is a kalaaleq (Greenlandic Inuk) performance artist, poet, actor, curator, storyteller and writer. She is known for performing uaajeerneq, a Greenlandic mask dance. She performs internationally, collaborates with other artists and is a fierce advocate for Inuit artists.

Erik DeLuca

Erik DeLuca is an artist and musician working with performance, sculpture, and text, in dialogue with social practice and critique. He has presented at a variety of places including MASS MoCA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, The Contemporary Austin, The Living Art Museum (Iceland), Columbia School of the Arts, Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, CalArts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Fieldwork: Marfa, and Yale University School of Art. His writing projects are published in Public Art Dialogue (Taylor & Francis), Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press), Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), and Mousse. He received a PhD in Music from the University of Virginia (2016), was in Myanmar with the support of an Asian Cultural Council grant (2018), and lectured at the Iceland University of the Arts (2016-2018). He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music and Multimedia at Brown University and Lecturer in Experimental and Foundation Studies at Rhode Island School of Design.

T.J. Demos

T. J. Demos is the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, at University of California, Santa Cruz, and founding Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. Demos is the author of numerous books, including Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (Sternberg Press, 2017); Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology(Sternberg Press, 2016); The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis (Duke University Press, 2013) – winner of the College Art Association’s 2014 Frank Jewett Mather Award – and Return to the Postcolony: Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2013). He recently co-edited The Routledge Companion on Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (2021), was a Getty Research Institute Fellow (Spring 2020), and directed the Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar research project Beyond the End of the World (2019-21). Demos was recently Chair and Chief Curator of the Climate Collective, providing public programming related to the 2021 Climate Emergency > Emergence program at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Maat) in Lisbon. He is presently working on a new book on radical futurisms.

Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann

Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann, Ph.D., is a Kalaaleq microbiologist. Her research connects microbes, Inuit foodways, fermentation and food sovereignty. She is currently an assistant professor at Ilisimatusarfik and a visiting scholar at University of California, Davis.

Andreas Hoffmann

Andreas Hoffmann is a curator with focus on circumpolar art as well as a writer,researcher, lecturer, currently artistic director for Arctic Culture Lab based on the Northwest Coast of Greenland. He is interested in new approaches and innovative concepts to improve audience development in the peripheries where cultural workers often face a gap between programming artistic concepts and expectations of the local society due to demography as well as social and educational background. Studied philosophy, history and musicology in Heidelberg, Salzburg and Brno and Reconsilation through Indigenous Education at the University of British Columbia. Since 1987 he curates performance- , music-, and contemporary art-festivals and exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Sweden, Czech Republic, Greenland as well as Norway.
Since 1990 he is lecturing at several universities (Charles University Prague, PennState University, State Humanitarian University Moscow, University Salzburg, Boston University, Mozarteum Salzburg, University of Freiburg, to name a few).

Wiola Ujazdowska & Anna Wojtyńska

Wiola Ujazdowska is an art worker and performer living in Iceland. She holds an M.A in Art Theory from Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland where she also studied Painting and Sainted Glass at the Department of Fine Arts in Lech Wolski master studio and Andrzej Kałucki glass workshop. 2012-2013 she studied in CICS, Cologne, Germany. Since 2014 she lives in Reykjavik. Her works have been shown in the U.S.A, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Iceland. Ujazdowska’s practice is balancing between socially engaged art, happenings and video works in which she talks about experiences of excluded groups in Nordic societies to show global phenomenons in a local context. She is mostly focusing on the group that she is most familiar with – working class migrants from East Europe. Methodology that she uses in her projects is inspired by anthropology and literature studies focused on linguistic processes of othering, post-humanistic perspectives on the other and philosophical concepts of identity. Her practice is a form of rejection of traditional way of making artworks in favor of a collective creation and recycling of already existing objects and materials to avoid overproduction of art. Creator of set design for theater works by Reykjavik Ensemble, Leikhópurinn PóliS and idepentent Alina Beylyagina as well curator of VOR/WIOSNA festival produced by MMF/Slaturhusid in Egilsstadir and ACT_IN_OUT international project (PL/IS/NO) awarded by a EEA grant program. She is also a member of collectives : Beyond The Post-Soviet – that gathers art workers coming from countries of so called “East Block” and dealing with post-soviet identity in their practices and AIVAG – Artists in Iceland Visa Action Group – collective that works on creating artists visa for creators outside Schengen area in Iceland.

Anna Wojtyńska holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Iceland and MA from the University of Warsaw. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in a project “What Integration Looks Like in Rural Locations: Studies in Icelandic Villages” In the past years, she was studying various aspect related to Polish migration to Iceland. Her specific interest includes migrants’ labour market position and transnational practices. Recently she has been also looking at representation of migration in arts.

Ruth Phoebe Tchana Wandji

I am Ruth Phoebe Tchana, a graduate from AgroParisTech – University of Montpellier, France in Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution. I am currently part of a European Project called FutureArctic (futurearctic.be) and hosted by Landbúnaðarháskóli Íslands (Agricultural University of Iceland) under Prof. Bjarni D. Sigurdsson’s supervision. Within the university, I am enrolled under the Environmental and Forest Sciences faculty, doing my research in Plant Ecology. My main focus is on subarctic plant phenology and stress evolution in a warmer world, that is, the plants growth phases, physical or chemical processes.