Interconnectedness and ways of being human today

#decolonizing visions of nature
Interconnectedness and ways of being human today
Sat. 26. 6. 17:0018:00

Lecture with Ela Spalding (PA), moderated by Regine Rapp (DE)

We are certainly living interesting times. The consequences of how humans in the industrialised world have been shaping the planet, mishandling fellow humans and nature to suit our needs are real and happening here and now. Facing a ten-year deadline to avoid cascades of devastating losses in the next decades, these times are asking us to connect with our humanity, with other ways of being in the world and with our creative capacities more than ever; in other words, to decolonise our perceptions of nature and our role within it. We are being asked to see ourselves as part of an interconnected whole; to consider how the thread of our lives and our actions intertwine with and affect the threads of other lives and life forms around us. How do we achieve such a shift? How do we manage to push less our own agendas and join more the web of life? To address these questions, Ela Spalding will quote texts by various authors and share examples of her art and facilitation work that use technology as methods and processes to encourage empathy, slowing down, listening and interconnection.

Ela Spalding

Ela Spalding (Panama, 1982) is a Berlin-based artist~facilitator and cultural producer exploring the space of art as an elegant conduit to practice and convey expanded notions of ecology and interconnectedness. Her professional background is in film, photography, dance and somatic awareness practices with a keen interest in sound and wellbeing. She combines these influences to invite listening and resonance within and without. Her artwork has been shown in the XIII Bienal de La Habana, Cuba (2019), the X Bienal Centroamericana in Costa Rica (2016), Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano (Bavic9) in Guatemala in 2014 as well as in collective exhibitions in Panama, Germany and Austria. She is founder and Creative Director of Estudio Nuboso–a nomadic platform for exchange between art, science, nature and society, tackling environmental issues in different bio-cultural contexts in Panama and beyond. She is also a founding member of Archipel Community Radio–a Berlin-based and cross-cultural web community radio with live and bandwidth iterations across borders.

© Regine Rapp
Regine Rapp

Regine Rapp is an art historian, curator and co-director ofArt Laboratory Berlin. She researches, curates and publishes on 21st century art interfacing with science and technology. Her research also focuses on modern and contemporary installation art, artist books and art and science collaborations. She taught art history at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle. She recently published ‘Hybrid Art. Kunst jenseits des Anthropozentrismus’ [Hybrid Art. Art beyond Anthropocentrism] (Kunstchronik, July 2020) and co-edited the book ‘Mind the Fungi’(TU Berlin University Press, December 2020).

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