BRANCHING OUT

HIAP Gallery Augusta, 3-4 October, 2015

How to create resilient practice as an artist, organizer, thinker, being, body? What kind of art works, and what kind of thinking and being will this practice produce?

Branching out is a two-day long symposium aiming to open a dialogue on ethics, ecology and economy in practicing (art) in the post-human era. It is a symposium on softening, fleshing and branching – an organic platform encouraging exchange between artists and other practitioners related.

The event grows out of our need to share questions and knowledge – the need to develop our thinking and art making in a dialogue with others. Therefore, instead of presenting existing art works, the project focuses on sharing our ongoing processes of meaning making, leaving room for unfinished thoughts and ideas. In their presentations Essi Kausalainen (artist) and Matthew Robson (plant biologist), Karolina Kucia (artist) and cockroaches (survival specialists), Terese Longva (artist) and Harald Dyrkorn (social scientist) will address alternative thinking strategies and structures – such as plant thinking, emergence and self-organization, schizoanalytic and parasitic practices – and their political and practical influences on our everyday lives. Concerning the possible confusions and gaps as a potential space for creative thinking/being/doing each presentation is followed by a commentary and an open conversation.

Branching out aims at openness, accessibility and intimacy. While sharing our presentations and questions we are also hoping to create space for unexpected voices, hesitation and slow thinking. Branching out is open for artists, scientists, and all of those interested.

You are cordially invited!

The program takes place between 11-16:00 on both days – Detailed schedule follows

The symposium is free of charge (Voluntary payment for the food)

Registrations & questions to:

essikausalainen@hotmail.com

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Presentations:

Performing Plant Thinking

Artist Essi Kausalainen has been collaborating with plant biologist Matthew Robsons (Helsinki University) in her performance projects since 2013. In the symposium they’ll talk about the concept of plant thinking, and plants survival strategies as possible structures for a sustainable practice. In addition to plant physiology, the presentation is influenced and inspired by the writings of Michael Marder, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and others.

Machinic Subjectivity 

Artist Terese Longva (Bergen) and social scientist Harald Dyrkorn (Oslo) are currently working on an art project grown out of Longva’s home farm that is no longer in the state of production. Following the breeding of Norwegian Reds in connection with the philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari and DeLanda, made them look at how social subjectivity is being produced through emergent behaviour. First part of the work is planned to be presented in the spring 2016 in Bergen.

Dinner: Mr Rat, a Cockroach and a Volunteer

Artist Karolina Kucia works with a Para-Site series of performances and objects. Together with her collaborator (absent) artist/researcher Tero Nauha and the small group of cockroaches, they will perform a presentation on parasitic self, precarity of artistic production and generic carnality. They explore Laruelle’s notion of non-philosophy and Guattari’s metamodel through figmenting machines and linking with universal references. The presentation approaches subjectivity as a parasite on the body and its heretic becomings.

The rest of the program will be confirmed later. In addition to the prepared presentations, commentators speaks and open conversation, it will consist of eating and doing and being together on the Suomenlinna Island.