Are you ready for a wet live-in? : explorations into listening

Listen. If I ask you to listen, what is it that I ask of you—that you will understand, or perhaps obey? Or is it some sort of readiness that is requested? What occurs with a body in the act of listening? How do sound and voice structure audio-visual-spatial relations in concrete situations? This doctoral thesis in fine arts consists of six artworks and an essay that documents the research process, or rather, acts as a travelogue as it stages and narrates a series of journeys into a predominantly sonic ecology. One entry into this field is offered by the animal “voice” and attempts to teach animals to speak human language. The first journey concerns a specific case where humanoid sounds were found to emanate from an unlikely source—the blowhole of a dolphin. Another point of entry is offered by the acousmatic voice, a voice split from its body, and more specifically, my encounter with the disembodied voice of Steve Buscemi in a prison in Philadelphia. This listening experience triggered a fascination with, and an inquiry into, the voices that exist alongside us, the parasitic relation that audio technology makes possible, and the way an accompanying voice changes one’s perceptions and even one’s behavior. In the case of both the animal and the acousmatic, the seemingly trivial act of attending to a voice quickly opens up a complex space of embodied entanglements with the potential to challenge much of what we take for granted. At the heart of my inquiry is a series of artworks made between 2012 and 2016, which constitute a third journey: the performance Limit-Cruisers (#1 Sphere), the praxis session Limit-Cruisers (#2 Crowd), the installations Therapy in Junkspace, Fluorescent You, and “Then, ere the bark above their shoulders grew,” and the lecture performance Articulations from the Orifice (The Dry and the Wet). The relationship between what is seen and heard is being explored and renegotiated in the arts and beyond. We are increasingly addressed by prerecorded and synthetic voices in both public and private spaces. Simultaneously, our notions of human communication are challenged and complicated by recent research in animal communication. My work attempts to address the shifts and complexities embodied in these developments. The three journeys are deeply entwined with theoretical inquiries into human-animal relationships, technology, and the philosophy of sound. In the essay, I consider as well how other artistic practices are exploring this same complex space. What I put forward is a materialist and concrete approach to listening understood as a situated practice. Listening is both a form of co-habitation and an ecology. In and through listening, I claim, one could be said to perform in concert with the things heard while at the same time being changed by them.Avhandlingen är även utgiven i serien: Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University: DoctoralStudies and Research in Fine and Performing Arts, 16. ISSN: 1653-8617</p

Methodologies of Kelp: On Feminist Posthumanities, Transversal Knowledge Production and Multispecies Ethics in an Age of Entanglement

We take kelp as material entities immersed in a multitude of relations with other creatures (for whom kelp serves as both nourishment and shelter) and inorganic elements of the milieu it resides in, on the one hand, and as a figuration: a material-semiotic “map of contestable worlds” that encompasses entangled threads of “knowledge, practice and power” (Haraway 1997, 11) in its local and global sense, on the other. While drawing on our field notes from the congress and feminist posthumanities and environmental humanities literatures (e.g. Alaimo 2016; Åsberg & Braidotti 2018; Sandilands & Erickson 2010; Iovino & Opperman 2014) – with a special focus on the so-called blue humanities/oceanic humanities (e.g. DeLoughrey 2019) – that unpack human/nonhuman relations in the context of the current environmental crisis and the accompanying “slow violence” (Nixon 2011), we mobilise a reflection on and make a proposal for “thinking with kelp” as a multi-faceted methodology of transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge production and practices: situated (Haraway 1988), enfleshed, transcorporeal (Alaimo 2010), collaborative, and committed to an ethics of multispecies response-ability (Haraway 2008)

Framtider på sin spets: Att värdera det omätbara

Vi menar i den här korta essän att öar, som det planerade, offentliga konstverket Future Island, har mycket att lära oss. De tränar vår förmåga att se stora sammanhang, ”connect the dots”. Med öar,som per definition ligger vid marginalerna av fast mark eller till och med långt ute till havs, tränas vår föreställningsförmåga. Det behövs nu när vi måste anpassa oss på nytt, till en miljö- och klimatförändrad värld. Nu när vi måste lära oss leva med ovissa klimatframtider behövs testscenarion och projektionsytor för tänkbara framtider, som Future Island-verket. Här har vetenskap och tekniken självklar plats – i egenskap av datainsamling och observationer av möjliga scenarier. Men för att verkligen öva vår föreställningsförmåga, och därmed vår anpassningsförmåga, i en redan miljöförändrad värld, krävs mer än disparat information. Det behövs mer än tekniska beräkningar, vetenskapliga övervakningssystem och informativa utbildningsinsatser. Nu krävs inlevelse, fantasiförmåga, spekulationer, nya horisonter och nya sätt att se sammanhang. Inte minst krävs avoss alla idag konsten att leva med det okända, det omätbara.The Posthumanities HubQueer Ecologies of Extinction and Multispecies Futures of the Baltic SeaFuture Islan

Framtider på sin spets: Att värdera det omätbara

Vi menar i den här korta essän att öar, som det planerade, offentliga konstverket Future Island, har mycket att lära oss. De tränar vår förmåga att se stora sammanhang, ”connect the dots”. Med öar,som per definition ligger vid marginalerna av fast mark eller till och med långt ute till havs, tränas vår föreställningsförmåga. Det behövs nu när vi måste anpassa oss på nytt, till en miljö- och klimatförändrad värld. Nu när vi måste lära oss leva med ovissa klimatframtider behövs testscenarion och projektionsytor för tänkbara framtider, som Future Island-verket. Här har vetenskap och tekniken självklar plats – i egenskap av datainsamling och observationer av möjliga scenarier. Men för att verkligen öva vår föreställningsförmåga, och därmed vår anpassningsförmåga, i en redan miljöförändrad värld, krävs mer än disparat information. Det behövs mer än tekniska beräkningar, vetenskapliga övervakningssystem och informativa utbildningsinsatser. Nu krävs inlevelse, fantasiförmåga, spekulationer, nya horisonter och nya sätt att se sammanhang. Inte minst krävs avoss alla idag konsten att leva med det okända, det omätbara.The Posthumanities HubQueer Ecologies of Extinction and Multispecies Futures of the Baltic SeaFuture Islan

More-than-human feminisms across arts and sciences

More-than-human feminisms across arts and sciences Feminist theories have long been concerned with the violent impact of (normative) Universal Man on society and nature, aconsequence of a modern phantasy divide between Nature and Culture. In this planetary era some call the Anthropocene, it isclearer to us how the environment is in us, and we humans are fully in the environment. The modern Nature/Culture divideimplodes violently on itself. For too long those regarded as less cultured, less-than-human and particularly nonhumans,like the very ecologies that sustains us, have been approached as mere resours or background for Universal Man. What canbe done - in practice, in thinking and in scholarship in such a situation?The present postnatural situation disrupts modern figurations of thought and scholarly practice, and begs new ones. Withclimate change, oceanic disturbance, habitat loss and rampant species extinction on the one hand, and new syntheticbiologies, technobodies and algorithms we live by on the other, it asks feminist sciences and arts for extradisciplinaryresponses, for new designs of practice.No longer can a division of academic labour be sustained, where technoscience does naked facts, use/abuse nonhumans andextract raw nature while artistic research, humanities and social science does culture, ethics and politics. Spurred by morethan-human feminisms, thicker forms of situated knowing have already emerged, for instance as practices of critical, creativeand feminist posthumanities.Such more-than-human humanities come in response to the pressing need to a) alter and decolonize such dividing knowledgeforms and to b) change the very ways we think, eat, and live with nonhumans in society. Sharing a Darwinian feeling forhow everything is connected, critically and creatively, with a relational ethics of care and concern, more-than-humanfeminisms and postdisciplinary disciplines, have paved way for environmental humanities and other more-than-human formsof the posthumanities. What are the stakes and challenges in these transformations? Why do we need them? And whatfeminist genealogies gets recognized? G22 Round-table panel, convened by Cecilia Åsberg and The Posthumanities Hub. Participants: Cecilia Åsberg1 , Marietta Radomska2 , Christina Fredengren3 , Jesse Peterson4 , Janna Holmstedt5 , Caroline KlingborgElgh 6  and Martin Avila7 1)Professor, Docent, Professor, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet 2) Fil Dr, Biträdande Lektor, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet 3) Professor Konstvetenskapliga Institutionen: Kulturvård, Uppsala Universitet 4) Fil Dr, Postdoktor, Tema Genus, Linköpings universitet and postdok Ekologi, Statens Lantbruksuniversitet 5) Fil Dr, Forskare, Forskningsavdelningen, Statens Historiska Muséer 6) MA, Doktorand, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet 7) Professor, Dr, Professor, Design, KonstfackThe Posthumanities Hu

More-than-human feminisms across arts and sciences

More-than-human feminisms across arts and sciences Feminist theories have long been concerned with the violent impact of (normative) Universal Man on society and nature, aconsequence of a modern phantasy divide between Nature and Culture. In this planetary era some call the Anthropocene, it isclearer to us how the environment is in us, and we humans are fully in the environment. The modern Nature/Culture divideimplodes violently on itself. For too long those regarded as less cultured, less-than-human and particularly nonhumans,like the very ecologies that sustains us, have been approached as mere resours or background for Universal Man. What canbe done - in practice, in thinking and in scholarship in such a situation?The present postnatural situation disrupts modern figurations of thought and scholarly practice, and begs new ones. Withclimate change, oceanic disturbance, habitat loss and rampant species extinction on the one hand, and new syntheticbiologies, technobodies and algorithms we live by on the other, it asks feminist sciences and arts for extradisciplinaryresponses, for new designs of practice.No longer can a division of academic labour be sustained, where technoscience does naked facts, use/abuse nonhumans andextract raw nature while artistic research, humanities and social science does culture, ethics and politics. Spurred by morethan-human feminisms, thicker forms of situated knowing have already emerged, for instance as practices of critical, creativeand feminist posthumanities.Such more-than-human humanities come in response to the pressing need to a) alter and decolonize such dividing knowledgeforms and to b) change the very ways we think, eat, and live with nonhumans in society. Sharing a Darwinian feeling forhow everything is connected, critically and creatively, with a relational ethics of care and concern, more-than-humanfeminisms and postdisciplinary disciplines, have paved way for environmental humanities and other more-than-human formsof the posthumanities. What are the stakes and challenges in these transformations? Why do we need them? And whatfeminist genealogies gets recognized? G22 Round-table panel, convened by Cecilia Åsberg and The Posthumanities Hub. Participants: Cecilia Åsberg1 , Marietta Radomska2 , Christina Fredengren3 , Jesse Peterson4 , Janna Holmstedt5 , Caroline KlingborgElgh 6  and Martin Avila7 1)Professor, Docent, Professor, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet 2) Fil Dr, Biträdande Lektor, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet 3) Professor Konstvetenskapliga Institutionen: Kulturvård, Uppsala Universitet 4) Fil Dr, Postdoktor, Tema Genus, Linköpings universitet and postdok Ekologi, Statens Lantbruksuniversitet 5) Fil Dr, Forskare, Forskningsavdelningen, Statens Historiska Muséer 6) MA, Doktorand, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet 7) Professor, Dr, Professor, Design, KonstfackThe Posthumanities Hu