SO CLOSE: ECOLOGIES OF LIFE AND DEATH

The international conference So Close: Ecologies of Life and Death approaches the future of life on our planet from the perspective of life’s end by drawing attention to reconsiderations of loss, decline, mourning, and death. In this way, it seeks to transcend the binary of, on the one hand, dystopian pessimism about the future and, on the other, utopian optimism in the all-powerful human capacity to overcome the end. How can we, including through art, develop the sensibilities, modes of perception, cultural practices and knowledge production we need for being and becoming with others in life and death? How can we consider the full implications of decline, make our farewells and preserve the memory of lost human and non-human lives, environments, and habitats, in order to affirm the (plural) politics of the present and future of the relational web of life?

PROGRAMME

14:30 / Registration
15:00 / Introduction

PANEL 1

15:15 / Maja and Reuben Fowkes / Surviving Extinction: Regenerative Ecologies of the Socialist Anthropocene

15:35 / Marietta Radomska / Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning: Biophilosophical Assemblages of (Non)Living Arts

15:55 / Thom van Dooren / Living in Unravelling Worlds: Snail Stories in a Time of Extinctions

16:15 / Discussion

17:00 / Break
 

PANEL 2

17:30 / Mick Wilson / Political Community with the Dead

17:50 / Šejla Kamerić / Ab uno disce omnes – From One Learn All

18:10 / Boštjan Videmšek / I Have Seen Too Much

18:30 / Discussion

Conference Advisory Committee:
• Urška Jurman, programme manager, Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory
• Zdenka Badovinac, director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb
• Rok Kranjc, researcher, Futurescraft & Institute for Ecology, Ljubljana
• Alenka Gregorič, artistic director, Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana

Foto: Nada Žgank