Introduction

The internet has the same carbon footprint as the airline industry. Our most powerful contemporary technology of knowledge production is itself killing the planet. We once believed that global communications networks would engender solidarity, justice, and emancipation, but they are instead seeding chaos, division, extremism, and fundamentalism. We have spent the last decade obsessed with the machines we have constructed, becoming ever more enmeshed with planetary-scale technologies to the detriment of the actual planet, and to ourselves.

In truth, our technologies are already Earth-bound. They are intimately connected with the material of the world through mines, materials, supply chains, undersea cables and cultures of extraction. At the same time, we are only just becoming aware of the more-than-human intelligences which have been with us all along, from animals, to plants, to ecosystems, capable of forms of communication and agency which are only now becoming apparent to us.

How can the tools we have to hand be reimagined to bring us down to Earth? How do we reassert the importance of community while building solidarity with the more-than-human world? What would it look like to take the intelligence of animals, plants, and ecosystems as seriously as we take the intelligence of smart machines? What is the relationship between distributed networks and distributed power? How do we practically engage with sensoriums other than our own? And what is vital about doing so here and now, on the edge of the Mediterranean and other, possible futures?

Recommended Reading

All of these should be available in the Onassis AIR library - or ask James for a PDF

  • The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • The Overstory — Richard Powers
  • Down to Earth — Bruno Latour
  • How Forests Think — Eduardo Kohn
  • When Animals Speak — Eva Meijer
  • The Great Derangement — Amitav Ghosh
  • Thus Spake the Plant — Monica Gagliano
  • The Symbiotic Planet — Lyn Margulis
  • The Spell of the Sensuous — David Abram
  • Fear of the Animal Planet — Jason Hribal

Also: The library of random readings

Week One/Two - April 15th April 14th

Advance Reading: Introduction to James’ book

Lecture: Introduction to James' work, new book, and programme.

Working days schedule

  • 11am – 1pm: Workshop Review / Lecture
  • 1pm – 3pm: Group Lunch / Discussion
  • 3pm – 6pm: Workshop

Location: Onassis AIR offices

Each workshop can be conducted either individually or at most in pairs, but we want to see a multiplicity of outcomes.

Week Three - April 22nd

Everything is Equally Evolved

Advance Reading: Symbiotic Planet: A new look at Evolution (Prologue and Chapter One), Lyn Margulis

Lecture: Technology, Ecology, and Ways of Seeing

Workshop: Online and scientific research, satellite imagery - View Slides

In this workshop we will explore methods of research, focussing on online archives, repositories, scientific papers, piracy and file conversion. We will also look at other forms of archives and apparatus for image research, including satellite image acquisition and processing.

Week Four - April 29th

Everything is Geo-Engineering

Advance Reading: The Water Clock in the Tower of the Winds, Joseph V. Noble; Derek J. de Solla Price, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 72, No. 4. (Oct., 1968), pp. 345-355.

Lecture: A History of Weird Computation, Physical Computing, Low Tech and No Tech - View Slides

Workshop: Sun Boxes and other renewable, regenerative and transformative tools - View Slides

In this workshop we will construct artifacts, tools, instruments and toys based on the transformation of renewable energies, e.g. solar, wind, and water.

Week Five - May 6th

Everything is Everyone

Advance Reading: A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals, Gilbert, Sap, et. al., The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 87, Number 4, December 2012

Lecture: Against Species, More-Than-Human Assemblies, Artistic Responses.

Workshop: Time, space, and care in artistic projects, aka how to exhibit with plants

In this workshop we will explore and prototype strategies for working with biological and environmental partners in artistic practices, with a focus on how to construct, install, document, and exhibit multi-species collaborations.

Week Six - May 13th

Everything is on the Table

Advance Reading: The Author of the Acacia Seeds and The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Ursula Le Guin

Lecture: Solarpunk, SF, Strange Attractors, and Speculation over the Mountain

Workshop: Writing stories

In this workshop we will write stories about desirable futures. These stories do not have to be enacted in language, but can include drawing, performance, and other media.

Evening: The final workshop will be followed by a dinner and discussion

Tutorial sessions / Floating Signifiers

  • Unfinished Projects
  • Unanswered Questions
  • Incomplete Research
  • Gaps, Lacunae, Omissions, Erasures

    • Any questions? Any time: contact via Signal or studio@jamesbridle.com.