Institute for
Postnatural Studies

This seminar will revolve around the concept of Postnature, understanding it as a political subject and place in the conflict, and will function as a debate platform from which to investigate, deepen, communicate and discuss new approaches to artistic practice through the political ecology, post-natural aesthetics, and the creation of new ethics that contribute to the definitive dissolution of the nature-culture binomial.

The loss of centrality of the human, the consequences of anthropic action, environmental aesthetics, and the alterity or the reproductions and displacements of natural phenomena, have reconfigured throughout the last century the way in which thought compromises or problematizes the natural, generating a discussion that blurs the limits between aesthetics, ethics, and politics. This relationship, often conflicting and antagonistic, has been strongly discussed from many perspectives, and today has become a fundamental controversy for understanding the transformations of contemporary culture. Postnature will navigate concepts and terms such as the Anthropocene and its multiple meanings, ecological parliaments and perspectivism, colonialism and necropolitics associated with resources, Object-Oriented Ontology or ecofeminisms in order to, theoretically and through critical sessions but also through practical experiences, articulate a change of perspective regarding the problem of Nature in the contemporary moment.

Session I Postnatural Anarchaeologies This introductory session proposes an approach to post-natural landscapes that defy categorization, whilst exploring matters and stories that blur the boundaries between the cultural, the natural, and the artificial. Session II Aesth(ethics) of Postapocalipsis This session will analyze the proliferation of narratives around the end of the world, understanding them as attempts to invent new mythologies which are appropriate to the present, guiding us while facing the definitive collapse of the distinction between nature and culture. Session III Un(vealing) the Anthropocene: Capitalocene, Chthulucene, Anthrobscene We will raise a critique of the contemporary understanding of the Anthropocene, and deploy other terminologies and approaches, both theoretical and material, in order to think about desirable worlds of the future. Session IV Un(vealing) the Anthropocene 2: Contemporary artistic practices Invited speaker shares insights on his artistic practice and research-based ongoing projects. The session revolves around a presentation, followed by an open discussion between all the participants. Session V The garden of Delights: Geopolitics and Botanics, displacements of seeds and bodies Via a digital visit to botanical gardens, we will explore how we have built the idea of nature into a specific space of the urban landscape that is layered with political, economical and aesthetical complexities. From queer plants to the rare ginkgo tree,  we will investigate how we exploit plants for medical purposes, how we shape nature for aesthetic pleasure and how botanical gardens have inspired artists in their practices. Session VI Eco-feminisms and Coexistence Analyzing theories from ecofeminism to new queer and coexistence approaches, this session proposes a political and post-anthropocentric revision of nature as a space for debate, as a parliament from which to be interested in the non-human, with entities, bodies and things that are not like us, but that also construct us and constitute us.

Session VII Postnatural Ecologies: Contemporary artistic practices Invited speaker shares insights on his artistic practice and research-based ongoing projects. The session revolves around a presentation, followed by an open discussion between all the participants. Session VIII Projects Presentations This closing session is an open conversation between all participants in which personal projects can be shared with invited artists and researchers.