Non/Living Queerings, Undoing Certainties, and Braiding Vulnerabilities: A Collective Reflection
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The ongoing global pandemic of Covid-19 has exposed SARS-CoV-2 as a potent non-human actant that resists the joint scientific, public health and socio-political efforts to contain and understand both the virus and the illness. Yet, such a narrative appears to conceal more than it reveals. The seeming agentiality of the novel coronavirus is itself but one manifestation of the continuous destruction of biodiversity, climate change, socio-economic inequalities, neocolonialism, overconsumption and the anthropogenic degradation of nature. Furthermore, focusing on the virus – an entity that holds an ambiguous status between the ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ – brings into question the issue of the agentiality of non/living matter. While the story of viral potency seems to get centre stage, overshadowing the complex and perverse entanglement of processes and phenomena which activated these potentials in the first place, the Covid-19 pandemic also becomes a prism that sheds light on the issues of environmental violence; social and environmental injustices; more-than-human agentiality; and ethico-political responses that the present situation may mobilise.
This article serves as a written record of joint conversations between artists and researchers in the working group ‘Non/Living Queerings’ that formed part of the online series of events ‘Braiding Friction’ organised by the research project Biofriction. The article strives to capture the collective effort of braiding and weaving a variety of situated perspectives, theoretical toolboxes, knowledges and experiences against the background of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the text focuses on the issues of crisis, ‘amplification effect’, viral agency and the changing notions of humanity.
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(c) Marietta Radomska, Mayra Citlalli Rojo Gómez, Margherita Pevere, Terike Haapoja, 2021
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Marietta Radomska, Linköping University, Sweden
Marietta Radomska, PhD, is Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at the Department of Thematic Studies – unit Gender Studies, Linköping University, SE. She is the co-director of The Posthumanities Hub; founder of The Eco- and Bioart Research Network, co-founder of Queer Death Studies Network and International Network for ECOcritical and DECOlonial Studies. Her research lays at the intersection of feminist theory, continental philosophy, posthumanities, queer death studies and contemporary art. She is the author of Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart (2016), and has published in Australian Feminist Studies, Somatechnics, Angelaki, and Women, Gender & Research, among others. More: www.mariettaradomska.com
Mayra Citlalli Rojo Gómez, Independent artist-researcher
Mexican artist, interdisciplinary researcher and curator in visual arts and body discourses. She developed postdoctoral research about textile and bacterial cellulose. His axes of artistic and theoretical research are the discourses of the body and teratology, the origin of life from what he has called anatomy-botany and liminal tissues. More: https://mayracitlally.wixsite.com/mayra-rojoartdesign
Margherita Pevere, Aalto University, Helsinki
Margherita Pevere is an artist and researcher working across biological arts and performance. Her inquiry hybridises biolab practice and biotechnology, ecology, feminist posthumanities and queer theory, with a hacking attitude to create visceral pieces that hunt today’s surging ecological complexity. Her body of work is a garden crawling with genetically edited bacteria, her epithelial cells, sex hormones, microbial biofilm, bovine blood, slugs, growing plants and decomposing biological remains. She is completing a PhD (Artistic Research) at Aalto University, supported by the Kone Foundation. She is a member of the Finnish Bioart Society and of The Posthumanities Hub. More: www.margheritapevere.com
Terike Haapoja, Parsons Fine Arts and NYU, New York
Terike Haapoja is a visual artist based in New York. Haapoja’s artworks, publications, writings and political projects investigate the mechanics of othering with a specific focus on issues arising from the anthropocentric world view of Eurocentric traditions. Haapoja represented Finland in the 55 Venice Biennale. Her work was awarded the ANTI prize for Live Art (2016), Dukaatti-prize (2008). Haapoja’s collaboration with Laura Gustafsson was awarded the Finnish State Media art award (2016) and Kiila-prize (2013). http://www.terikehaapoja.net/
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