MULTINATURALISM
2016 – current
Nature lost its innocence! This statement, probably, provokes very different thoughts, ideas and reactions. Some of us will
think of “pristine nature” as something that is the Other, the Non-culture, the Mother or the cruel and cool Destroyer; others
will respond that “everything is nature” and that everything that is crafted, manipulated, built, manufactured, destroyed,
is Nature or at least, part of it. Hence, some will argue nature always was, and always will remain, innocent; others will
insist: it (nature) never was (innocent). But, stop! Since quite some time we became skeptical of all encompassing dichotomies
– the either/or that makes “our” nature bifurcate. (Whitehead, 1920)
Furthermore, we learned that “the others” are no longer outside; that nonhumans (plants, animals, tools, artifacts etc.) have
to be brought back into the description in a more active capacity. And that this marks the disappearance of older notions
of nature and of its counterpart, namely culture. “A disappearance that is itself due to the fact that everybody (…) is pulled
deeper and deeper into the same ecological maelstrom.” (Latour 2014)
An experimental socio-technical machine as huge and complex as the particle collider LHC (Large Hadron Collider) of CERN (Conseil
Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), with its respective detectors, and the woods in a remote area of our planet - do they
have something in common? Does a “life in the woods” (Thoreau, 1854) and the detection of “Beauty Quarks” (Hephy ÖAW, 2014)
show any connection? This question is the departure point for the annual project work(s) on “MULTINATURALISM” that will be
elaborated by students of the AS Master course at the UfAK in collaboration with:
HEPHY (J. Schieck et al), Austrian Academy of Sciences, ViennaCERN (M. Hoch), Geneva Site Specific Art (P. Petrisch, K. Hornek), University of Applied Arts ViennaWildlife Ecology (C. Walzer), University of Veterinary Medicine ViennaRadiology & Nuclear Medicine (A. Maier, F. Kainberger), Medical Univeristy of ViennaUniversity of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (R. Seidl)
The term “multinaturalism” emerges upon its juxtaposition with modern, “multiculturalist” cosmologies: where
the latter rest on the mutual implication between the unity of nature and the multiplicity of cultures, the Amerindian conception
presupposes, on the contrary, a unity of mind and a diversity of bodies, in other words, “culture” or subject as the
form of the universal, and “nature” or object as the particular. (Viveiros de Castro 2015)
The goal of this project is to temporarily create a conceptual particle collider that juxtaposes, accelerates and detects
cosmologies that are investigated experimentally by practices of natural sciences, the social sciences and humanities (High
Energy Physics, Biology, Wildlife Ecology, Social Ecology, Forest- and Soil Sciences, Anthropology, Science and Technology
Studies, Eco Semiotics). The medium for making this collision of metaphysical schemes happen and the means for constructing
this particle collider is provided by artistic research that aims at practicing “the permanent decolonization of thought.”
(Viveiros de Castro, 2012).
The topic “MULTINATURALISM” will be developed along three axes:
1: The Nature of Nature – CERN / HEPHYThe knowledge machineries of contemporary High energy Physics (HEP); Unity of Nature, Building Blocks of Universe; The (Standard)
Model/s; Machines, Detectors, Epistemic Culture (K. Knorr-Cetina) of HEP in contrast to other disciplines / Detector Agency
and Physiology (HEPHY/Austrian Academy of Science), beyond the standard model (dark matter, dark energy), administration of
experiments and scientific bureaucracy.
excursions and ethnography, lectures
2: Nature strikes back – GAIAMachines/Technology and Nature/Planet as living organism GAIA (Lovelock et al.) / Cosmopolitics, (I. Stengers, B. Latour,
P. Descola), Agential realist ontology (Barad, K.), Social Ecology, Ecosemiotics (A. Hornborg, M. Fischer-Kowalski), Infrastructures
(C. Bruun Jensen), forest ecosystem dynamics (R. Seidl)
lecture series, literature, excursions
3: Natura naturans – IN THE WOODS“Research in the wild” (Callon et al 2003), “The essential facts of life” (H.D. Thoreau), “Biophilia” effect (Wilson, 1995,) Green pedagogy, Animism (e-flux #36), studying a “matter of concern” depending on the location
(tba), site specific and problem oriented practical field work, location: tba,
literature, lectures, blocked field work, beginning at the end of summer semester
– Concept: Bernd Kräftner
