The artistic research project WASTELAND by Daniel Fetzner and Martin Dornberg is a topological intersection of art, philosophy and media ecology in the anthropocene. It is creating sensory experiences in different aesthetic forms and phases about matter and waste. To catch it, go to their installation and workshop in Geneva, February 21–March 11, 2017. Excitingly they link to Kalevi Kull and Graham Harman. For information about their installation, see here.
Novel research practices
I didn’t know about Daniel Fetzner’s work before. He contacted me because he had, as he wrote “stumbled across your amazing website of Situated Ecologies.” That is of course precisely the way to get my attention! 🙂 Connecting further, we have realised we have several interests in common, from waste, matter, and urbanisation, to the anthrop(ob)scene and artistic practice as research. In this blog post, I would like to promote their project and upcoming events around WASTELAND.
Daniel Fetzner is Professor of Design and Artistic Research at Hochschule Offenburg and Head of the Media Ecology Lab in Germany. On his website, he describes himself as media artist and media scientist. Currently he is with Martin Dornberg busy with the artistic research WASTELAND that deals with, as he wrote in his email “waste, matter and objects in the »anthrobscene«”, and more particularly “is an experimental comparison between the handling of matter in the Garbage City in Cairo and the Trinational Metropol Region Upper Rhine in Southern Germany.”
He suggested that a good starting point to WASTELAND for the Situated Ecologies audience, is to check out the interview he did below with the philosopher Graham Harman, “amongst the workers in Cairo in the middle of things.” (Print version is available here.)
They are now taking their WASTELAND project on the road with events, installations and workshops in an exhibtion at Geneva from Feb 21–March 11, 2017. Read the associated blogpost here to learn how to attend and participate. Part of this exhibition will be a workshop with the ecophysiologist Kalevi Kull form University of Tartu, Estonia (which Martín Ávila visited and wrote about at Situated Ecologies).
Intersection with Situated Ecologies
For those following this website, their work intersects with several recurrent themes—waste, urbanisation, global South, political ecology, the anthropo(ob)scene and the keen exploration of a wide range of experimental and artistic practices in doing research. See for instance my projects with colleagues on urban waste, HICCUP and TLR Waste, the artistic engagements around insects in “Tactical Symbiotics” (and yes, Daniel has done something similar in his BUZZ, on “parasitic ecologies”) and film work.
There also seems to be a keen resonance with politics in a Rancièreien sense; of what can be perceived and felt and the powers that configures the distribution of the sensible as I have explored with Andrés Henao Castro in our Democratic Practices seminars, and with Erik Swyngedouw in The Anthropo-Obscene book project.
If you do go to the WASTELAND event in Geneva, please consider writing a blog post for Situated Ecologies (email me).
/Henrik
