Nepantlas #03 »So-called Plants: Items from the Possible Bodies Inventory«
Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha)
Curated by Daphne Dragona
October 1, 2020, 2–3:30 pm (CEST)
How do »so-called plants« exist with and through technologies,
infrastructures, and techniques of 3D? Weaving between technological
writing, fiction, and theory, Possible Bodies contributes to Nepantlas
with a persistent affirmation of the possibility for radical
trans*feminist experimentation with volumetric presences in
hypercomputational regimes. We write »plant,« or »so-called plants« to
signal the political fiction of treating »plants« as individual
entities, as species, and as a kingdom. Possible Bodies wants to
problematize these normalized figure-background divides in favor of a
multiplicity of potential dysphorias.
Thinking along the agency of cultural artifacts that capture and
co-compose so-called bodies, Possible Bodies has by now inventoried more
than one hundred items. For this event, they bring together manuals,
mathematical concepts, art-projects, and micro-CT images to wonder about
the vividness of so-called plants in the context of software tools for
botanical data processing, 3D-visualization of plantations and
computational vegetation and cracks and porous membranes in-between the
vegetal and other forms of existence.
Cracks can be seen as void and sterile spaces in between known
entities, but they can also be taken as wide open, inhabitable bridges;
interporous places to be in relation (non-neutral and also not innocent
at all): connecting and fertile surfaces that provide with the blurring
travel form one isolated unit of life onto another, in specific ways.
Rooting for the possibilities of nature-cultural topologies seems
important in computational environments in which exciting complexities
are routinely erased and weeded out for the sake of efficiency.
Possible Bodies develops alongside an inventory of cases and results
in texts, workshops, visual essays, and performances. For this occasion,
they will perform a guided tour through several items of the inventory.
The tour will be followed by a conversation with Daphne Dragona.
Possible Bodies (Femke
Snelting, Jara Rocha) researches how bodies and technologies have been
mutually constituted, and interrogates corpo-realities and their
orientation through parametric interfaces. It invites the generation of
concepts and experimental renderings, wild combinations, and digital and
non-digital prototypes for different embodiments.
Possible Bodies has by now inventoried more than one hundred items
and cases. For this event, they will offer a performative guided tour
through items of interest. Visiting manuals, mathematical concepts, art
projects, and micro-CT images, they will wonder about the vividness of
so-called plants in the context of various software tools. The tour will
be followed by a conversation with Daphne Dragona.
Nepantlas is an online program curated by Daphne Dragona.
It focuses on projects that introduce social and technological
infrastructures based on relationships of care, respect, and
interdependence. Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha are the program’s third
guests.
+ info: https://www.akademie-solitude.de/en/event/nepantlas-03/