R&Sie, “Hybrid Muscle” (2003) in “Boys from Mars,” by Philippe Parreno (2003). © 2010 Philippe Parreno
The third day of the Synapse conference began with a stimulating talk by Natalie Jeremijenko. Jeremijenko is an artist and scientist, based in New York, whose work focuses on, among tohers – in her words – “In the tradition of institutional critique… developing an alternative institution (xClinic, but also OOZ, the Cross(x)Species Adventure Club, Farmacy and HSIM) as a way of working on or redesiging/reimagining our shared urban environments” (see our interview with Jeremijenko here). As a respected scientist and artist, Jeremijenko was in a unique position to comment on issues of relevance to Synapse participants: the nature of scientific work versus artistic work, a contemporary ‘crisis of agency’, for example. One of Jeremijenko’s claims that stood out to me – or was at least unexpected – was her urging that artistic work not shy from making truth claims in the way made by scientists. Jeremijenko did not touch with much detail on the nature of factitude or ‘truth’ in a scientific context – it seems to me that many scientists, working after Latour (for one), might adhere to notions of scientific certainty or truth with a kind of understood sense of provisionality (it may also be the case that this provisionality is a precondition for scientific ‘progress’). Suggesting that artists are in a position to make truth (or “truth”) claims represented to me to be – if I understood Jeremijenko correctly – a striking argument for a potential overlap between scientific and artistic research. In addition, this thinking might go a long way in actualizing the political/social implications of artistic practice.
Next we heard three talks by SYNAPSE cyrators Margarida Mendes (who spoke about entropy and systems theory in a talk titled “On Conductivity”), by Xiaoyu Weng (“More Human Than Human”) and Etienne Turpin (“The Design of the Anthropocene: A prehistory”). Mendes – as Jeremijenko pointed out in the Q&A after the talks – adopted a systems theory approach to artistic practice that was otherwise mostly untouched by the other talks in the programme; Jeremijenko cautioned that systems theory, which emerged from engineering, is not equally applicable to all fields. Personally, I was most interested in Mendes’ discussion of the Philippe Parreno film “The Boy from Mars” (2003), the production of which involved a commision by architects R&Sie to build a structure, titled “Hybrid Muscle” (2003) that generated its own electricity via the use of an albino Buffalo, whose motion was converted into electrical power. Xiayu Weng’s talk took its point of departure from the Ridley Scott film “Blade Runner” (1982), specifically by analyzing the use of animal imagery in the scene where Deckard endeavors to prove whether Rachael is a replicant or human. Since replicants don’t have empathy, animals seemed to serve as a stand in for an ethical understanding that is uniquely ‘human’: reporting a calfskin wallet, a little boy’s butterfly collection, a wasp on one’s arm, etc. Weng’s argument presented an interesting and subtle take on the ethical and even diagnostic/critical implications of human-animal relations (the domain of testing, for example).
Click here to view the embedded video.
Lastly we heard a talk titled “The Design of the Anthropocene” by Etienne Turpin and a well-argued discussion of problems behind anthropocene-related concepts in dOCUMENTA13 by T.J. Demos. During the Q&A After Demos’ talk, Bergit Arends pressed Demos on his understanding of the political activity that can be potentiated by engaging specific audiences in an exhibition. Arends was reacting to Demos’ ostensible disregard, in his talk, for questions of audience in an exhibition of such a scale. Demos – rather patly, to my mind – claimed that viewing and discussing art in itself constituted a political act. It seemed to me that this idea indicated a rather limited understanding of what counts as political action. Fittingly, this was followed up by the opening of “The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the Outside” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, an exhibition curated by Anselm Franke and Diedrich Diederichsen that engaged with many of these questions and quandaries.