Second Nature Lab

The SECOND NATURE LAB seeks answers to the questions posed during NODE20. It brings together artists that help us to better understand the complexity of the looming climate catastrophe and our role in it. In the aftermath of NODE20, our online laboratory will invite you to go practical. Over the coming months, you will develop strategies for a more sustainable practice in many different spheres of life. In collaboration with outstanding artists, we will develop prototypes, try out sustainable strategies and gain new perspectives on our environment and its species. 

The lab modules will be run by:

Joanie Lemercier, Antye Greie (AGF), Mary Maggic, Environmental Performance Agency, Julian Oliver and Anna-Luise Lorenz.

 
Image: Post Cyber Live Programme, Mary Maggic photo Mark Blower, London ICA, 2017

Designing a virtual lab

Virtual spaces have likely never been so omnipresent as they are today. In times when encounters in real space are kept to a minimum, the expansion of the digital is obvious. But this also increases the expectations towards virtual spaces: They are  supposed to be a place of social encounter, an information center and a malleable archive all in one.

Together with Professor Florian Jenett, students of Communication Design at Mainz University of Applied Sciences had set themselves the goal of developing a digital platform for the exhibition NODE20 and the Second Nature Lab during summer semester of 2020. The goal was to create a space that enables offline and virtual visitors to deposit their own impressions and experiences. The core question was how to give more visibility to the contributions of online and offline visitors alike.

But that was before COVID-19. With the lockdown the demands for the digital platform changed. What these were and what kind of results the students achieved and will achieve over the course of the project, you will soon explore in our virtual SECOND NATURE LAB.

Mapping Eco Futures

The team of the Institute for Art Education at the Goethe University Frankfurt (Visual Culture/Prof. Dr. Verena Kuni) joins with the project MAPPING ECO FUTURES: a network of short articles in various formats that will continue to grow throughout the duration of the SECOND NATURE LAB.

With scientific and poetic impulses on phenomena, theories and practices at the interfaces of art, design and technology, as they play a role in the SECOND NATURE LAB, MAPPING ECO FUTURES explores the field of future ecologies.

How to attend?

Right after NODE20, we will launch the SECOND NATURE LAB platform and process. Over the course of the coming weeks, we will run a five lab modules. Our teens module hosted by Anna-Luise Lorenz will run in spring 2021 connected to our Digitale Welten Festival.

As an application process, you will be asked to respond to a few questions. The application process will be launched soon.

 

 

Joanie Lemercier

Brussels

joanielemercier.com

Joanie Lemercier is a French artist primarily focused on projections of light in space and its influence on our perception.
Lemercier was introduced to creating art on a computer at age five by attending classes on pattern design for fabrics taught by his mother. The threads of his early education grounded his interest in physical structures: geometry, patterns, and minimalist forms. As Lemercier’s work evolved, he began to play with these concrete structures through the physics and philosophy of how light can be used to manipulate perceived reality.

Antye Greie (AGF)

antyegreie.com

Antye Greie-Ripatti calls herself poemproducer or audio sculptress, performing and producing as AGF. She/her weaves deconstructed language, field recordings, low frequencies, disembodied voices, post-club aesthetics, interwoven a-rhythmical patterns into dense sonic feminist sonic technologies.

Audio sculptress performing as AGF, poetess and new media artist Antye Greie-Ripatti utilizes language, sound, feminist sonic technologies, politics & explores speech within the audible depths of anti-rhythmic post-internet assemblages.

Mary Maggic

Vienna

maggic.ooo

Mary Maggic (b. Los Angeles, 1991) is a non-binary Chinese-American artist currently based in Vienna, Austria. Their work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction. Since 2015, Maggic’s research has centered on hormone biopolitics and environmental toxicity, and how the ethos and methodologies of biohacking can serve to demystify invisible lines of molecular (bio)power.

 

Julian Oliver

Berlin, Germany

julianoliver.com

Julian Oliver is a New Zealander, Critical Engineer, systems architect, educator, electronic artist and activist. His work and lectures have been presented at many conferences, museums, festivals and international electronic-art events including Transmediale, the Chaos Communication Congress, Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, FILE and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Julian has received several awards, most notably the distinguished Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2011 for the project Newstweek (with Daniil Vasiliev). He is the co-author of the Critical Engineering Manifesto, and member of the Critical Engineering Working Group.

Julian has given numerous workshops and master classes in data forensics, creative hacking, computer networking, counter-surveillance, software art, object-oriented programming, radio, UNIX/Linux, (and previously) augmented reality, virtual architecture, video-game development and information visualisation worldwide.

Ellie Irons

New York, US

environmentalperformanceagency.com

Ellie Irons is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn and Troy, New York. Working across media, from watercolor to re-wilding experiments, her practice combines socially engaged art and ecology fieldwork. Recent work involves collaborations focused on spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds), including co-founding the Next Epoch Seed Library and the Environmental Performance Agency. Irons received a BA from Scripps College in Los Angeles and an MFA from Hunter College, NY. She is currently a PhD candidate in arts practice Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, focusing on how critical ecosocial art contributes to the struggle for multispecies solidarity in an age of climate chaos and mass extinction. 

Andrea Haenggi

environmentalperformanceagency.com

Andrea Haenggi (she/her), Swiss-born, is breathing and working at this moment in Lenapehoking — now called Brooklyn, New York. Calling on plants as her guides, teachers, mentors and performers, her dance and ecosocial art/fieldwork practice creates a form of theater called Ethnochoreobotanography, which simultaneously explores issues regarding decolonization, ecology, feminism, power, labor and care. 

Christopher Kennedy

New York, US

environmentalperformanceagency.com

Christopher Kennedy is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. With a background in environmental engineering, Kennedy re-imagines field science techniques and new forms of storytelling to develop embodied research, installations, sculptures, and publications that examine conventional notions of “Nature,” interspecies agency, and biocultural collaboration. 

Artemisia vulgaris

New York

environmentalperformanceagency.com

Artemisia vulgaris (common mugwort) community organizer representing the urban spontaneous plants and says : It is sensational to be smelly – be hazy — be tasty – be dreamy – be blurry – be green – be silver –be juicy – be fragile – be resilient – be vulnerable – be loud – be unnoticed –be overwhelming –be everywhere – To affect – be affected – To have no self-expression- To need light – water – touch – wind – rain – microorganisms – It is sensational – To be fluid – changeable – unpredictable – invasive– persistent – resilient – sharp. It is sensational to be a rhizome. It is sensational that you make me a stranger in the street -> an immigrant -> an alien -> a healer -> a smuggler -> with no passport

Anna-Luise Lorenz

Berlin

annaluiselorenz.de

Anna-Luise Lorenz is a designer, researcher, and artist based in Berlin. Her research-based work explores the corrupting forces of reality which find expression in the anomalies of empiricism and rationalism: the weird, the absurd, or the enigmatic processes within biological and technological systems. Through a wide range of media such as performance, installation, animation and fictional short stories Anna explores the human and non-human body as a pivotal point for the emergence of new hybrid beings, and accidental or deliberate non-human design practices.

Team

Curators: Jeanne Charlotte Vogt & Alexander Scholz

Curatorial Advisor: Prof. Dr. Verena Kuni

Concept Mapping Eco Futures: Prof. Verena Kuni & Julia Schaake,

Concept Second Nature Platform: Prof. Florian Jenett,

Editorial Management: Julia Schaake

Texts: AG MAPPING ECO FUTURES (Goethe-University/Institut für Kunstpädagogik), Prof. Dr. Verena Kuni & Julia Schaake, Hannah Heilmann, Marie-Louise Meier, Julia Neumann, Daniela Sonnabend, Nikolett Trenka, Carla Wiggering

Gallery: Jeanne Charlotte Vogt, Alexander Scholz, Julia Schaake

 

 

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