Planetary Ecologies:

For our upcoming session on November 14, we will read texts by Kathryn Yusoff and materials by Jamie Allen on aspects of the geological commons or “a form of collective communion that imagines a world in which precarity and abundance is shared across the possibility and forms of life; and that this sharing enacts the possibilities of a common life between organisms” (Yusoff 2017). In recent years, a turn toward posthuman and inhuman ecologies seeks to reposition planetary exchanges at the heart of post-anthropocentric discourse. How do we establish responsible stances and actions that engage with and translate planetary-scale ventures in extractionism, and instantiate alternatives to these?

We look forward to discussing questions of ecological, economical and technological constraints on planetary communion, the challenges of geological complexity and practices for artists, media makers, and researchers, as steps and experiments toward or away from different kinds of planetary intimacy.

On Planetary Ecologies, the reading group and discussion series, started in 2020: “We are interested in voices in research, art, media and design that concern themselves with planetarity and its futures. That is, the ways in which people(s), life, and other beings on earth negotiate its alterity. As such, we are committed to seeking out, understanding, spending time with and reckoning with the actions called for by voices of scholarship and organisation that would seek to go beyond the ‘management of diversity’ (Andrea N. Baldwin) and ‘index[es] of white supremacist domination’ (Romy Opperman).”

For more information, please visit https://criticalmedialab.ch/planetary-ecologies-2022/.