September 23-24, (workshop). mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo): Merographic relations: steps to an ecology of the partial

mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo):

Merographic relations: steps to an ecology of the partial

Part of the project Aurora: A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid

Workshop: Friday, September 23, 17:00-20:00, and Saturday, September 24,

14:00-18:00

What is a relation? Could alternative ways of thinking relationality help us deal with the current ecological crises? In this workshop, we invite participants to a collective unlearning of relations taken for granted in our everyday thoughts. Engaging in talks, reflexive exercises and working together in the construction of material structures, we will look for the “displacement effects” enabled by changing the description of our own decomposition into open partialities.

Merography – a concept developed in the work of British social anthropologist and feminist Marilyn Strathern – could be defined as the study of relations between parts without wholes: anything can be seen as a part of something else. A perspectival change does more than change the ‘part’ we are to see; new connections bring new ontologies. Starting from a contrast between “plural” and “post-plural” worlds, we will discuss themes such as kinship between human and non-human beings, political belongings and action, and the paradoxical roles of all-encompassing ideas such as Nature and Gaia in contemporary discussions regarding the Anthropocene.

We recommend coming to both days of the workshop; however you can also join only one. Limited places for the workshop are available. Registration is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com

mordo is an artistic collective composed by:

Aline Baiana (she/her/hers) is an Afro-Pindoramic artist, born in 1985 in the territory today known as Brazil.
 Her research addresses Afro-Brazilian and Native-Americans worlding practices and ontological conflicts between the Global North and South. She participated in several exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and her work has been featured at the 11h Berlin Biennale and Sharjah Biennial 14. She is currently a grant holder of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme.

Camila de Caux (she/her/hers; they/them/their) is a writer and ethnologist. Their interests, formed in the confluence between literary aesthetics and anthropological questioning, revolve around notions of multiverse and corporeality, and their reverberations in political practices. Their essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in Ruído Manifesto, mallarmagens, Revista DR, and elsewhere. They are co-editor of the online publication aperfectstorm.net.

Eric Macedo (he/him/his) is a social anthropologist, working on themes related to colonialism, ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism, and alterity relations. His PhD thesis describes the historical process of colonization in the region around the city of Altamira, in the Brazilian Amazon, and changes introduced by the Belo Monte Hydroelectric dam. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Speculative and Critical Inquiry, investigating images of extraterrestrial beings in science fiction narratives, with a particular interest in crossings between multispecies and decolonial perspectives.

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Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
June–November 2022
A project assembled by The Institute for Endotic Research with MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr), Linda Zhang & Dr. Biko Mandela Gray, Nnenna Onuoha, Shoufay Derz, mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo), Ana Alenso & Andrea Acosta, and Romuald Krężel.

“Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid” is an interdisciplinary project initiated by TIER. It departs from the notion of mutual aid, as a way to understand connections between ecology and interdependence. Aurora, which stands for dawn, is among the most common symbols for hope. The project goes beyond criticism, proposing actionable strategies for imagining better futures.

Zoologist and political scientist Piotr Kropotkin used the term mutual aid starting in 1880 to describe a model in which nature, in many observed cases, functions through collaborative entanglements. This perspective was confronting the one based on competition, proposed by the Neo-Darwinists, who sought a model of nature that justified the exploitative and competitive logic of capitalism from a scientific point of view. This capitalist model based on perpetual extraction is arguably one of the main reasons for the climate collapse.

Instead, the mutual aid model looked for a system that understands how all entities are entangled, and how species developed through collaboration in many cases. Scientist Lynn Margulis expanded on this model analyzing how symbiosis is at the basis of all life on Earth, and how this process is based on interdependence. Can the notion of mutual aid (understood both from biology and from politics) offer the tools to face the climate crisis and the developing collapse? By placing focus on interdependence, could it be possible to anticipate strategies against the climate collapse, learning from historical processes inscribed in the colonial program? What role does machine learning play?

The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) seeks to combine these views and methodologies to produce a platform together with other institutions and collaborators, who work in a critical position between art, activism and science: how can we think and work within ecology from a decolonial perspective, and with the logic of mutual aid? Which kind of speculative fictions are possible to foster the imagination of alternative, more sustainable ways of coexistence among humans, nonhuman lifeforms and nonliving entities based on interdependence?

The platform “Aurora“ will be presented from June to November 2022. Every month, there will be a new artistic installment at TIER, working as a spatial setting for hosting a workshop led by the invited contributors.

All events are free of charge. Limited places for the workshops are available. Registration for the workshops is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com

MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr): Conspiring Timelines: Shimmering Temporalities
Workshop: Thursday, June 2 & Friday, June 3, 16:00-20:00
Spatial Setting: June 4–18, Th, Fr & Sa 14:00-18:00

Linda Zhang and Dr. Biko Mandela Gray: Phenomenology of the Road: Tracing the Materiality of Loss
3D Scanning Workshop: Friday, July 15, 16:00-20:00 & Saturday, July 16, 14:00-18:00

Shoufay Derz: Towards the Unknown: Rituals of Alienship
Workshop: Tuesday, September 6, Wednesday, September 7 & Thursday, September 8

Nnenna Onuoha: Apocalypse Where: Scenes from the Ends of the World
Workshop: Tuesday, September 13 & Wednesday, September 14

mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo): Merographic Relations: Steps to an Ecology of the Partial
Workshop: Friday, September 23 & Saturday, September 24

Romuald Krężel: Microclimate
Workshop: October (dates tbc)

Ana Alenso and Andrea Acosta: We are Satellites, Experimental Observations in Semi-Industrial Territories.
Workshop: November (dates tbc)

Design by Lilia Di Bella/Archive Appendix

Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by: