Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies
Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies
Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies
25–27 May 2023, Edith Russ House for Media Art
What is submerged lingers beneath the surface, in the murk and the gloom, barely visible and elusive. Macarena Gómez-Barris (2017) introduced the term ‘submerged modes’ to describe complex and resistant forms of life and knowledge. These exist within specific material and media environments; sites of digital-capitalist oppression as well as industrial and neo-colonialist exploitation, whilst also resisting these powers. Through their intangible density and illegible heterogeneity, these perspectives elude an ‘extractive view’ from above—that is, approaches aimed at totalising representation, disciplining and capitalist valorisation. Instead, they invite engagement with methods and perspectives that are equally submerged.
Seeking to open up and expand the rich repertoire of meanings inherent in Gómez-Barris’s concept—and focusing on its generative potential by slightly altering its terminology—the artistic and scholarly contributions to the workshop explore the transformative potential of operating and perceiving from below, particularly in times of political and ecological crisis: Can ‘submerging’ be transformed into an aesthetic strategy? What role do imaging media and technologies play in visualising the submerged? To what extent are forms of representation or supposedly evident spatial, temporal and historical orders called into question? How does it relate to the underground in its many geological, material and symbolic meanings? And what happens if we take seriously the processes of gathering and evolving inherent in the term ‘submerging’? In other words: What emerges from submersion?
Registration:
Concept and organisation: Marie Sophie Beckmann & Petra Löffler
In collaboration with: Jakob Claus
Programme
Thursday, 25 May
WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
15:00 - 15:30
Marie Sophie Beckmann & Petra Löffler (Oldenburg)
FORUM: QUEER GEO-TECHNO-CHEMISTRIES
15:45 - 16:45
Helen Pritchard (Basel): "Love Theories for Submergent Queer Geo-Techno-Chemistries"
16:45 - 17:15
Coffee Break
FORUM: DECOLONISING GEOENGINEERING
17:15 - 18:15
Patrizia Costantin (Espoo): "Resilient Terra"
Friday, 26 May
PANEL: SUBMERGED ARCHIVES I
09:30 - 11:30
Andrea Liu (Berlin/New York): "Commemorating Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa: Reparative Archiving From Below"
Maryse Ouellet (Bonn): "How to Care for the Submerged Memory of the Camps? Perspectives from Esther Shalev-Gerz and Andrea Büttner's Installation Works"
Özge Çelikaslan-Teuscher & Pınar Asan (Braunschweig/ Münster): "The Thresholds of Sub(e)merging: Contemporary Art and Archive in Turkey"
PANEL: SUBMERGED ARCHIVES II
11:45 - 13:15
Johanna Laub (Frankfurt): "Sedimented Debris: Unearthing the Precarious Archive of Guinea- Bissau's Militant Cinema in 'Luta Ca Caba Inda'"
Hannah Schmedes (Bochum): "Revenant Infrastructures: Bog Bodies, Archives"
13:15 - 14:30
Lunch Break
PANEL: LOSING GROUND
14:30 - 16:00
Hauke Ohls (Bonn) "Submerged Perspectives Through the View from Above in Contemporary Art"
Martin Siegler (Weimar): "Sinkholes, or: The Abyss of Media"
16:00 - 16:30
Coffee Break
FORUM: WETLAND ONTOLOGIES
16:30 - 17:30
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (Vilnius/Boston): "Amphibian Pedagogy and Wet Ontologies of the Swamp"
LECTURE PERFORMANCE: SUBMERGED HISTORIES
17:45 - 18:45
Suza Husse & Verena Melgarejo Weinandt (Berlin): "she creates nightmares. troubling colonial phantasies (revenge ~ avatars and manyness*)"
Saturday, 27 May
FORUM: LIQUID ONTOLOGIES
09:30 - 10:30
Liliana Gómez (Kassel): "Liquid Ontologies and Water as Media-Reflexive Dimension in Contemporary Art"
PANEL: AESTHETICS OF SUBMERGING
10:45 - 12:15
Friederike Nastold (Oldenburg): "Some Kind of Bodies - Some Kind of Natures: Affective- Performative Aesthetics of Submergence in Tejal Shah's and Gauri Gill's Work"
Amelie Wedel (Bochum): "Beetles, Algae, Litter: Cinematic Multi-Species Co-Production in 'Geographies of Solitude'"
12:15 - 13:15
Lunch Break
CLOSING DISCUSSION
13:15 - 14:00
Moderated by Jakob Claus