TENTACULAR ECOLOGIES

Throughout Western art history, plants have been traditionally represented as objects, symbols, or resources, reflecting a broader cultural context that placed humans above other forms of life. In visual arts, the still life genre contributed to the commodification of nature, and the representation of vegetable life as static. However, a shift towards a post-anthropocentric framework in contemporary discourse opens windows to explore alternative narratives focused on plants’ ecological agency and intrinsic value.

Still Life Ecologies is a performative installation that speculates on the possibility of a plant influencing its own portrayal, through a co-created process with a human partner, exploring entangled relationships between human and non-human bodies. By employing bio-feedback sensors, microcontroller processing, and an EMS (Electronic Muscle Stimulation), the work emerges in a setup in which a plant ‘takes over’ the muscles of the artist trying to portray it.

INSTERSTITIAL ALCHEMY presents an experiment of practice-based artistic research, that speculates on the healing of aquatic ecosystems, through a process of transmutation of micro pollutants. The work is particularly interested in how an intervention on a microscale can affect broader ecosystems and their territories. In the last years scientists have demonstrated that ecological variability at small spatial scales—often less than a square meter — can have very significant consequences in big territories. So could we perform micro interventions that produce relevant transformations, potentially independent from anti-ecological political and economic and forces?

This event was organized by the Interface Cultures department at University of Art and Design Linz, within the program of the Ars Eletronica Festival. In The Leonardo LASER network, an international program taking place in over 50 cities around the world, organizing events promoting interdisciplinary networking through inspiring presentations and conversations. The fourth event in Linz, “Danube Songs” in 2023 looks into the water medium through the eyes of an interdisciplinary group of speakers, formed by artists, curators, scientists, designers, and architects.

THINKING WEED - INTERSTITIAL ECOLOGIES is a workshop organized by Catarina Reis and Fabricio Lamoncha at the Kunstuniversität Linz. The participants are challenged to discover sub-represented lives, entities, or concepts present in narrow (but rich) physical and immaterial gaps. A space for discussion, exploration, and alternative forms of representation of these realities is provided, through a series of brief exercises, which include fieldwork and artistic experimentation.