INTRODUCTION

Infrastructures, as we typically know them, are considered to be organisational, economic, physical and digital structures (e.g. roads, buildings, trains, power supplies, data centres and fibre-optic cables among others) that frame the flow of life within society. In its etymology, the root infra- means ‘below’ or ‘beneath’, speaking towards the many layers of the material world, as well as the invisible layers or labours of what it takes to have a world.

The material world comes from a raw materiality that cannot be thought outside of its local life-world. In contrast, globalised economies depend on infrastructures pretending that these local life-worlds do not exist. The global circulation of goods, services, labour, knowledge and capital is based on infrastructures that violently decontextualize them whilst simultaneously suppressing their visibility. What is at work here are power dynamics—constructed through commodification of species and labour; dispossession and colonial violence—that are never neutral and result in the destruction of many worlds. They result in infrastructures that are not just material, but also deeply ideological. They also need to be understood in terms of knowledge, ideas and language. This worldview contrasts sharply with deeply rooted beliefs in bio-regions and also indigenous cosmologies, where the natural world and landscapes are seen as alive and interconnected. In this perspective, humans are part of a web of relationships with other beings, emphasising respect, care, and reciprocity amongst all forms of existence.

Within our current world, the more-than-human realm is often stripped of its life-world in order to make infrastructure. Oil was once a relationship between algae and zooplankton deep within the Earth over a mass amount of time before its extraction as an energy source. Wood was once engaged within the tree communicating with various species and molecules before it became a device for mass construction. Soil, in the words of Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, is said to be an “infrastructure of life” in the way that it is both a home to species and a source of agricultural prosperity and yet, it has become a finite resource due to techno-agricultural production leaving 33% of today’s soil already degraded and over 90% is set to become degraded by 2050 (FAO and ITPS, 2015; IPBES, 2018).

A more clear-eyed acknowledgement to the more-than-human world would enhance our capacity for connection, reciprocity and coexistence. Through valuing the overseen worlds and revisioning humans aligned with living principles, how, as artists, researchers and designers, do we utilise various lenses of investigation, methodologies, language and practice to interrupt, resist and restructure infrastructures?

How can we understand the hidden and invisible forces that shape our world where artistic research becomes a revelatory device? Is it even possible to alter an infrastructure at a level of depth and if so, what could be the means of such dismantling and exposures? How can designers develop alternative systems aligned with living principles? How could these altered structures be based on reciprocity and care rather than extraction? How can this lead towards building more ecological processes/ practices and a new design paradigm? How do communities (human and more-than-human) come together to do so? How to hack an infrastructure in which the flow is altered where alterity produces a critical difference, weird, other, new? How can art & design actively engage in challenging those hegemonies? How could design play a key role in envisioning and activating alternative systems if aligned with living principles?

How do we critique, resist and re-vision infrastructures connected to, for example, colonial violence, and even more so, how do we dream and rebuild new infrastructures? Acting as a testing ground to usher in dialogue in this lecture series symposium, we invite guests to explore throughout their artistic research, the means and methods of interrogating infrastructures and also to reveal the ecological value of the unseen more than human worlds. On one end, it is about critique and revelation. On the other end, there comes a moment of action and critical imagination to interrupt and re-create. We ask, what is the role of artistic research and design within this process? How can art & design become agents of change towards new reciprocal and caring economies actively shaping and activating alternative infrastructures? How can design create systems of care, collaboration, and reciprocity? And what does it mean to hold these discussions across scales–in a gallery, an art academy and through the field?

PROGRAM

Monday 25 November, 10:30 – 17:30
Wednesday 27 November, 10:30 – 14:30

SCHEDULE – MONDAY 25 NOVEMBER

10:30 – 10:45
In(di)visible Infrastructures, Bridging Overseen Worlds introduction

10:45
Artistic and Digital Infrastructures
With Dr. Ramon Amaro and Dr. Sebastian Olma, moderated by Victoria McKenzie

This conversation between Dr. Ramon Amaro—Senior Researcher of Digital Cultures at Het Nieuwe Institute, critical theorist, engineer and sociologist by training—and Dr. Sebastian Olma, writer, critic, and Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at CARADT—sets the stage for a critical contemplation on infrastructures. Both academics present notions of infrastructure as it pertains to their practices within the art world, as well as the problematics of having infrastructure so heavily entwined with the ontologies of contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism. How do we resist the very materials we have internalised? What are the invisibilised or perhaps psychosocial dimensions of infrastructures that might pertain having a fugitive relationship to them? How does one not destroy the very structures that exist, but hack them in a way that the material might present a newness—of structure and of self. What is the role of art within this system of hacking?

12:00
More than Human Unseen; hybrid-weird collaborative communities
With Adriana Knouf, Louis Alderson-Bythell, Samantha Jenkins, moderated by Prof. Delfina Fantini van Ditmar

Hybrid-weird collaborative communities, exemplified by lichens and extremophiles: Lichens, illustrate the value of unclassified symbiotic relationships highlighting the significance of living and collaborating with others. These organisms act as ecosystem builders, providing food sources and habitats for various species. They can additionally survive in extreme conditions on planet Earth as well as in extraterrestrial space. Who composes these entities? What implications does this have for our economy? When we consider these relationships in the context of society, they suggest transformations and new ways of becoming something beyond our current understanding—envisioning humanity as a community that transcends categorisation. What can the creation of a Lichen clock illuminate about a particular socio-economic context of artistic production and how might the existence of Lichen clocks allow a reflection on alternative infrastructures? About extremophiles, what value do their unusual forms bring? What can be learned from their remarkable resilience to environmental stressors that demonstrate their adaptability to life in extreme conditions?

Collective panel: Ramon Amaro, Sebastian Olma, Adriana Knouf, Louis Alderson-Bythell, Samantha Jenkins. Moderated by Victoria McKenzie and Delfina Fantini van Ditmar

13:30 – 14:30
Lunch Break

14:30
Abnormal Plants and Anomalous Arts: Troubling the Non/Human Norm (Online)
With Aliya Say

Тhe talk will explore the ways in which botanical anomalies and artistic practices confront and destabilise our normative ideas of ‘human-nature’ interaction. Through examining the works of artists and scientists such as Emma Kunz and Kate Brown, we’ll delve into how abnormalities in plants, human intervention, and visionary art can reveal the invisible aspects of ecological interdependence, historical trauma, and the impacts of human-driven environmental change. Focusing on the notion of teratology—the study of abnormalities in life forms—we will draw on the works of diverse artists, including artist-botanist Mary Anne Stebbing, artist-mystic Emma Kunz and contemporary artist Nona Inescu, to move beyond aestheticised forms and discuss the resilience and adaptability of plants in response to change, whether genetic, anthropogenic, or even mystical, and revealing ‘hidden principles’ in nature.

We will delve into the stories of man-made anomalies, particularly in the Pripyat Marshes, site of the Chernobyl catastrophe (subject of heightened attention recently, following the invasion and occupation of the Exclusion Zone by the Russian military). We will discuss teratologic malformations that span centuries, continents and histories and point to the toxic exposures that have reconfigured landscapes and bodies, whether of humans or plants. Mary Anne Stebbing’s depiction of the monstrous flora, Emma Kunz’s attempts to restore the balance in human bodies and communities through her mystical healing practices, and Kate Brown’s quest to visualise the effects of man’s destruction and toxic imprint on ecosystems appear to be linked in an unlikely, one could even say anomalous, chain.

16:00
Arabidopsis Thaliana in Outer Space
With Anna Mikkola

The talk Arabidopsis Thaliana in Outer Space recounts the story of the first plant ever grown from seed to seed in microgravity by weaving text with images and videos. Retelling how Arabidopsis thaliana plants took root and germinated seeds in microgravity on the Soviet Salyut 7 space station in 1982, Anna will touch upon paranoias embedded in scientific work during the Cold War. The astrobiologist Dr. Danguolė Švegždienė, who worked at the Lithuanian scientific laboratory where the successful astrobotany devices were built, told me that the Soviet director of the laboratory was not transparent about the details of the experiments and did not, for example, tell the scientists whether the plants got taken to outer space. Tuning into the plant's language and knowing that roots grow differently in microgravity than on the Earth could help scientists interpret where they have lived despite the secrecies. The talk also brings forth the beneficial effects of growing plants on a space station on astronauts' mental health. Using feminist science studies that emphasise embodiment, situatedness, and subjectivity, the talk reflects on the concepts of rooting and alienation through the history of growing plants in microgravity on a space station.

SCHEDULE – WEDNESDAY 27 NOVEMBER

10:30
The Turn of The Ground in An Earth-Sky World (Online)
With Tim Ingold, moderated by Dr. Annouchka Bayley, Victoria McKenzie, Prof. Delfina Fantini van Ditmar and Virginia Tassinari

If the air is up above, and the earth down below, what lies in between? The answer is the ground. But how, then, should we describe it? Is it an interface, like a pavement, which separates the Earth from the sky, keeping each to its respective domain, or is it a zone in which earth and sky interpenetrate, allowing soil and moisture to combine with atmospheric air in the production of life? Focusing on what it means to turn the ground, in the practices of both cultivation and burial, we argue that it is alternately both. As generations come and go, the earth alternately opens to the sky and turns against it.

13:00 pm
Imagining Otherwise: Complexity, Entanglement, Epistemology
With Dr. Annouchka Bayley, moderated by Victoria McKenzie and Prof. Delfina Fantini van Ditmar

Annouchka’s presentation will take an installation workshop approach to entangle the importance of arts-based pedagogies in higher education with notions of complexity for fostering more-than-human futures. Drawing on Karen Barad’s (2007) concepts of diffraction, material-discursivity, agential realism, and entanglement, and on Lola Olufemi’s notion of ‘imagining otherwise’ she proposes the utilisation of affective, artistic, and material-discursive approaches to addressing complexity. She asks: What if building equitable futures didn’t require us to reimagine and articulate complexity issues such as nature/cultures, spaces/places, materials/systems, and even what it means to be 'human' we already know, but ways we might not yet know? What would that require of us epistemically? How could we approach this transformation within education?

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Victoria McKenzie is an academic-activist, educator and artist. Her work focuses on the interconnections and entanglements of Earth where the realms of the individual, collective (human and more-than-human) and systems align. Trained with an expertise in Research Architecture and Sustainability, Victoria holds a BA in arts and sciences with a specialist in Critical Theory and a double major in Architecture and Urban Studies. She completed her MA at Goldsmiths University of London with high distinction at the Centre for Research Architecture. Victoria currently runs an architectural-research agency called ‘RRA’ Radical Research & Re-storying Agency which is informed by the question: “how can the pre-colonial past inform a decolonial future?”. Both Victoria’s research and practice are grounded in the ways in which building, being and communing align. She has worked with a variety of architectural practices and arts institutions such as ICE Institute for Creative Exchange, Cittadellarte, Triennale di Milano, Amisacho Restoracíon, Somerset House, Forensic Architecture, Adjaye Associates, Sandberg Instituut Rietveld Academie, Free Congo Now and Het Nieuwe Instituut—to connect art, design, politics and ecology in order to continuously communicate, dream and make new futures into existence. Currently, Victoria resides in Amsterdam, Netherlands where she is the theory tutor at the MA Ecology Futures program at Avans’ University’s Master of Art and at the KABK in the MA for Non-linear Narratives.

Prof. Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, PhD is a Research Professor at the Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (CARADT) on Regenerative Art and Design and a Senior Researcher at the Royal College of Art where she co-directs the UKRI-funded Becoming Regenerative Lab. Delfina holds a BA in Biology and completed her PhD at the Royal College of Art in the School of Design (SoD), where she has taught in the MA Design Products, MSc/MA Innovation Design Engineering, and MA Fashion programmes. Driven by her interest in ecological thinking, reflective practices and inter-relations as a systemic response to the environmental collapse, Delfina’s critical practice examines material ethics of care and the necessary paradigm shift in design. She co-founded the Design Research Society (DRS) Special Interest Group on Design and Ethics. In 2021, she was chosen as one of the Future Observatory Design Researchers in Residence (DRiR) at the Design Museum, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Delfina has been a crit and Visiting Lecturer in several institutions, including The Bartlett, Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins (UAL), The Design Museum, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), Syracuse University, Rice University, Critical Media Lab Basel and TU Berlin, among others.

Dr. Ramon Amaro is Senior Researcher for Digital Culture and Lead Curator of -1, the testing ground and innovation hub for new tools, methods and public uses of digital culture at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. His writings, research and artistic practice emerge at the intersections of Black Study, digital culture, psychosocial study, and the critique of computational reason. Ramon holds a BSe in Mechanical Engineering, an MA in Sociology and a PhD in Philosophy of Technology. Before joining Nieuwe Instituut, Ramon worked as Lecturer (Assistant Prof.) in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at UCL (London), Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, Engineering Program Manager at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Quality Design Engineer at General Motors Corporation. His recent book, The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being (Sternberg, 2023) contemplates the abstruse nature of programming and mathematics, and the deep incursion of racial hierarchy, to inspire alternative approaches to contemporary algorithmic practice.

Prof. Sebastian Olma holds the research chair for Cultural and Creative Industries at the Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (Caradt) at Avans University of Applied Sciences. He is also the founding editor of the webjournal Making and Breaking. Alongside his academic work, he has advised policymakers throughout Europe on the facts and fictions of the creative economy. He lives in Amsterdam, where he is involved in (sub)cultural projects such as OT301 and Amsterdam Alternative. His publications include Art and Autonomy: Past, Present, Future (2018, V2_ Publishing) and In Defence of Serendipity: For a Radical Politics of Innovation (2016, Repeater Press).

Samantha Jenkins is a PhD student researching the evolution of photosynthesis in polar cyanobacteria at Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum. Previously Samantha worked as a Lead Microbiologist at bio-material company BIOHM. She is particularly interested in integrating citizen science work into the Grantham Institute (Imperial College London), so that their expeditions can contribute to environmental science as well as showing that these excursions can be done ethically and sustainably.

Dr. Adriana Knouf, PhD (NL/US) works as an artist, writer, musician, and xenologist. She attunes herself to electromagic frequencies; studies the interferences of temporalities future, past, and present; and experiments with entities bio, silico, litho, cosmic. She is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxenolab, a nomadic artistic research laboratory that promotes entanglements among entities trans and xeno. Adriana regularly presents her artistic research around the world and beyond, including a work that has flown aboard the International Space Station. Her work has been recognized by a number of awards, including an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (2021), an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica (2005), BCS Futures Award Longlist selection as part of the Lumen Prize (2023), an Honorary Mention from the Science Fiction Research Association's Innovative Research Award (2021), and as a prize winner in The Lake’s Works for Radio #4 (2020). She additionally performs with her modular synthesiser as Selestra, and designs and sells modular synthesiser modules through her company selestium modular.

LAB is the artistic practice of Louis Alderson-Bythell. LAB creates sculptural works to reflect on the narratives we create between humans and non-hu-mans, collaborating with scientists and researchers from various disciplines from such as Insect Behavioural Ecology, Lichenology and Artificial Intelligence. Informed by biology and bio-technology, environmental observation through deep time, bio-politics, and the interplay between stability and plasticity in ecological systems. These areas are used as lenses to explore, interrogate and showcase the poetry and interdependence in more-than- human systems and to build critical narratives around them. Their work has exhibited nationally and internationally at ArtNight London, Kunsthal Charlottenborg Copenhagen, The Vigeland Museum Oslo, Thorvaldens Museum Copenhagen, and Art Week Rotterdam. LAB is a former resident at the Sarabande Foundation. More recently LAB has created public sculptures for sites in Denmark and Switzerland. Alongside their creative practice, Louis has been a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, in the School of Design since 2018 and participates in academic research as part of the AiDesign Lab.

Dr. Aliya Say is an art writer and editor. Her current research is concerned with botanical abstraction in the work of twentieth-century artist-mystics, such as Hilma af Klint, and with the parallels between vegetal ontology and mystical states. She completed her PhD at Aarhus University, Denmark, under the supervision of Prof. Jacob Wamberg and Prof. Michael Marder. Her interests include art in the age of Anthropocene, the present and future forms of human and more than human intelligence, and their wider effects on the planetary ecology. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including Artforum, frieze, The White Review, The Art Newspaper, and others. She has worked as an assistant editor at the Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, and was a recipient of the Novo Nordisk Foundation grant and a former research fellow at the Serpentine Gallery, UK.

Anna Mikkola is a London based artist, working with moving image, text, sound and installation art. Her work explores how technologies shape people’s subjectivity and relationship with the environment. Weaving different real events and fictions, she reflects on knowledge infrastructures and how futures are constructed through networked images. Mikkola received her MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Somerset House (London), SPACE (London), Jupiter Woods (London), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Rewire (The Hague), Index (Stockholm), Knipsu (Bergen), Trust (Berlin), FUTURA (Prague), L’Inconnue (New York) and others. She was a resident at the Somerset House Studios (London) and is a lecturer at several universities, most recently at the Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Prof. Tim Ingold is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. His more recent work explores environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold’s current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013), The Life of Lines(2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2018), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018), Correspondences (2020), Imagining for Real (2022) and The Rise and Fall of Generation Now (2023). Ingold is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2022 he was made a CBE for services to Anthropology.

Dr. Annouchka Bayley (SFHEA) is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She is Chair of the Arts & Creativities Research Group, runs the Entangled Futures Festival, is co-lead of LEAPLab at the CRASSH Centre, and formerly the director and designer of the Arts, Creativities & Education MPhil Programme (2021-24). She writes scholarly books and articles on Posthumanism, Education and Arts. Annouchka has written, directed, and performed more than 20 plays and one-woman shows worldwide. She is an Emerging Director with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Annouchka's first novel, The Blood Countess, is available now. You can read an interview with her about the historical aspects of the book on BBC News.

Virginia Tassinari’s work situates on the boundary between design and philosophy, both in terms of design research and theory as well as through design practice. Currently based at TU Delft, she is co-initiator of the DESIS Philosophy Talks format and member of the DESIS International Committee. Her publication “Designing in Dark Times" edited with Eduardo Staszowski (Parsons) has been awarded the Compasso d'Oro 2022. The book aims to initiate an important and necessary reflection on the reasons and responsibilities of design and the designer in relation to the challenges and changes of the contemporary world.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
⌀ Dates: Monday 25 and Wednesday 27 November 2024
⌀ Doors open: 10:00
⌀ Presentations: 10:30 – 16:00 (Monday 25 November), 10:30 – 14:30 (Wednesday 27 November)
⌀ Language: English
⌀ Free admission, R.S.V.P. required
⌀ Location: RADIUS Water Tower, Kalverbos 22
⌀ Note that the location is not wheelchair accessible. Please get in contact with us to discuss alternative ways to allow your participation.  
⌀ IN(DI)VISIBLE INFRASTRUCTURES: BRIDGING OVERSEEN WORLDS is a collaboration between Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (CARADT) and Avans Masters of Art.
⌀ The programme is assembled by Victoria McKenzie and Prof. Delfina Fantini van Ditmar.