Event overview
Critical Environments is a series of lectures and events, which engages with the apprehension that we are living in end times through a wide variety of thematic and disciplinary perspectives.
Critical Environments Visual Cultures Public Programme Spring 2015
Plants historically have been located between the mineral and animal worlds. Not only did they occupy the perplexing border area between the living and nonliving, and were therefore called living crystals, they were also denied any sensitivity or capability for decision making. This talk will investigate how recent philosophical inquiries into plant lives, art practices involving their bodily presence, and the scientific discoveries of plant biologists lead to a conclusion that plants, although occupying a position of full visibility, have been seriously overlooked. Bearing in mind that the evolutionary paths of plants and animals split about two billion years ago, we rediscover plants, observing how they developed their own peculiar body plans, life styles and modes of reproduction, which now come to our attention as a source of inspiration in postanthropocentric efforts to find yet another way of being together.
Monika Bakke writes on contemporary art and aesthetics, with a particular focus on posthumanist, gender and cross-cultural perspectives. She lectures in the Philosophy Department at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. She is the author of two books: Bio-transfigurations: Art and Aesthetics of Posthumanism (2010, in Polish) and Open Body (2000, in Polish), co-author of Pleroma: Art in Search of Fullness (1998), and editor of Australian Aboriginal Aesthetics (2004, in Polish), Going Aerial: Air, Art, Architecture (2006) and The Life od Air: Dwelling, Communicating, Manipulating (2011). Since 2001 she has been an editor of the Polish cultural journal Czas Kultury (Time of Culture).
‘Critical environments’ names several senses. If the (Greek) krinein is to sift and kritikos is the ability to discern, then we are faced with the work of interpretation. Yet if we turn to the Latin criticare, then those environments are diagnosed as gravely ill. We know that what we call the ‘environment’ is indeed in a state of crisis – acidification renders the oceans increasingly inhospitable to life; deforestation threatens both local ecologies and global climate maintenance; the appetite for meat eats up land as well as nonhuman life. Many of us choose not to know this, or perhaps maintain the fetishistic logic of knowing that comes with simultaneous disavowal. Corporate interests ranging across agriculture, pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, and the super-saturation of all forms of media hamper the work of interpretation and the possibility of agency and intervention.
The event is free, no booking is required and all are welcome.
Series chairs: Lynn Turner & Wood Roberdeau
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Mar 2015 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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