Shared Habitats

Project

267722

Status

Submitted

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS AWARDS : existing completed examples

Project title

Shared Habitats

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Description

The project defines the interdisciplinary art teaching at the Chair of Media Environments at the Bauhaus University Weimar. Three exhibitions, several workshops, and a publication were inspired by interactions between artistic, technical, scientific, living, and nonliving. While the exhibitions featured the artworks of the students and their educators, workshops invited lay people to join experimentation, the contributions to the publication discuss the context raised by the artworks.

Where was your project implemented in the EU?

When was your project implemented?

Has your project benefited from EU programmes or funds?

Which programme(s) or fund(s)? Provide the name of the programme(s)/fund(s), the strand/action line as relevant and the year.

Please provide a summary of your project

Between 2017 and 2019, three exhibitions under the title Shared Habitats were carried out by a team from the Chair of Media Environments at Bauhaus University, Weimar. Referring to the environment as a concept from artistic practices of the 1950s that emphasizes the tension between life and art, the team aimed to redesign everyday situations and shape the interdisciplinary education model at the Bauhaus University. The basis for the 2021 publication was the exhibitions at the MO Museum in Vilnius and at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. An accompanying series of conferences became a means of structuring our thoughts in one place. The texts contributed explicitly address the issue of acting and designing a habitat that, as we have proposed, is to be shared. The publication aids in understanding the concept of a new artistic approach and the art teaching that has emerged from interactions between artistic, technical, scientific, living, and nonliving things. Essays, both based on conference contributions and other texts, either relate to theoretical discourses raised by artworks, show how young artists today approach cultural issues, or develop situations of living together with other species.  All the contributions to the exhibitions and the publication invite the audiences and readers into new experiences and new imaginaries. The project also invites to rethink the role of art and the role of the artist within umwelts, milieus, and habitats.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of sustainability and how these have been met

In the Shared Habitats project, we have highlighted sustainable development including social, economic, and ecological dimensions. The social dimension was based on Donna Haraway's notion of "making kin," which considers multiple species and interactions in a multi-species world. We looked at the understanding of ourselves and interactions with the environment in which we live. How do we build social bonds? What is the impact of our interactions on each other? Since we are responsible for each other, we have first and foremost tried to understand each other and build mutual bonds. The notion of "shared habitats" followed in the footsteps of the Anthropocene discourse, which is rooted in understanding the irreversible impact humans have had on the planet. Therefore, we positioned ourselves within the industry which caused the ecological crisis and looked at the ideas to deal with it. So instead of following the standards of industry and mass production, we developed our own tools and uses of them. Strategies included prototyping, speculation, iterative social practices, collective writing and drawing, hacking, DIY, and DIWO. Our ecological sustainable strategies included the socio-technical developments that actually have contributed to causing the environmental crisis. We used them to question the ecological crisis and to interact with the different ecologies. One way to shift our collective thinking was to reconsider our ecological position on Earth, living in not a human environment, but a posthuman environment – an idea followed by Rosi Braidotti's critical posthumanism and her awareness of being part of the Anthropocene. Our strategies for sustainable development have shifted in perspective on our configuration as a species, from the social to economical to ecological spheres, and renewed hope for a constructive rather than a destructive way forward.  

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these have been met

Instead of presenting ourselves next to the artifacts, we took a place of the artifacts themselves. One of our key objectives was to position ourselves in between other creatures and the art audience, sometimes as a moderator, sometimes as a troublemaker, sometimes as a catalyst or promoter. We tried to position ourselves within the sensual statements of the whole artistic arrangement, being one voice among many. Considering the environment as an organizing concept of artistic practice in the Chair of Media Environments, we have laid out a focus on technical interfaces to support various species in negotiating their habitats. In the artworks presented, students developed an understanding of living beings while using tools and methodologies practiced in the sciences. These ideas are grounded with what Andrew Pickering described as the “dance of agency,” an emergent world of heterogenous elements including humans and things. We have referred to Jakob von Uexküll and his concept of the umwelt, defining the internal “world” of a living being as a result of interactions with its environment. As a final result, while proposing technology-based feedback systems, we concluded that the artworks presented in the exhibitions move from an art-observer dynamic to an interactive setting in which the environment is no less important than the art-observer itself.  

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of inclusion and how these have been met

Shared Habitats has developed spheres where people from different contexts and with different living conditions, along with other organisms and machines, live together based on the constitution of their own environment. Our exhibitions included both students and educators placing them on the same level. Also, in terms of gender, we have been thinking of the balance in both, exhibition setting and the publication. In our workshops, we have implemented the inclusion aspect by developing DIYbio methods for working with fellow human beings and nonhuman organisms. Our workshops invited participants regardless of their age, disability, ethnic background, religion, and sexual orientation. Furthermore, artists working with BioArt are gender diverse and perhaps the most equal within the art world. Our place in the world is positioned above other organisms, as per conventional vertical modes of hierarchical thinking. Arguably, this accepted mindset is what has caused our social crisis. Inherent to our project is the belief in a shared, horizontal habitat, in which we reimagine our role in the world during this time of the ecological, social, and mental collapse. Therefore, we have been targeting, and including next to humans, nonhuman species as underrepresented minorities in this human-led project.  

Please give information on the results/impacts achieved by your project in relation to the category you apply for

Interdisciplinary education models could be best explained with a contribution to the conference and publication by Georg Trogemann, who referred to the historically grown gap between the humanities and arts on one hand and sciences and technologies on the other. To elude this gap we have been following a model based on the invention of unconventional narratives to achieve new ways of understanding and practicing technology. The starting point for the reflections employed here was the confrontation with two different forms of thinking within arts and sciences and the need to do justice to both. In our artistic and educational work, we reinvented the design of everyday practices and artifacts. The artwork of our students encompass contemporary digital and technological concepts (see Rhizomes by Freya Xia Probst or Growing Geometries – Tattooing Mushrooms by Theresa Schubert). Instead of representing reality, students have been interfering with our environment by extending our perception through the use of sensors (see The Pig Simulator by Stephan Isermann or Six Sidekicks for Free by Rico Graupner) and direct interaction with technological tools (see microplastic_hyperobject by Maria Degand or Self-Repair Lab by Mindaugas Gapševičius). Also, our students ended up in their artworks with activities enhanced or even replaced through the operations of machines, directly altering our environment (see Interfacing for a Sixth Sense by Sebastian Kaye or Luminograf #1 by Christian Döller).  By relying on our own experiences, generating our own data, documenting, and setting up an exchange, we have established credibility beyond scientific standards and offered not only knowledge but also sensual experiences.  

Please explain the way citizens benefiting from or affected by the project and civil society have been involved in the project and what has been the impact of this involvement on the project

All three exhibitions included conferences and workshops which were open for citizens. With our public exhibitions, we have provided artistic works where citizens from different contexts and with different living conditions, along with other organisms and machines, were invited to experience mutual interaction. While providing interactive installations we have attempted to circumvent the preconceived models of humans and to provide different worlds for the citizens, their counterparts, and a common environment allowing direct exchange among varied beings. The project has also offered a number of DIY/DIWO experiences right in the exhibition setting (see Self-Repair Lab by Mindaugas Gapševičius). The experiences suggested a social event where artists, scientists, and audiences of the exhibition collaboratively explored the up-to-date artistic questioning, scientific inventions, technological innovations, and life challenges associated with those inventions and innovations. While the prerogative of the artists and scientists was to execute the conceptualized experiment, citizens contributed in pivotal ways by asking questions, suggesting answers, tinkering with the matter, and, finally, providing new artifacts. While the exhibitions offered direct experience with artistic work, conferences added to it a theoretical ground. Last but not least, the publication that comprises the entire project will influence the reader's future artistic and theoretical work, but also provide a rough understanding of how humans, nonhuman organisms, and machines share their habitats.  

Please highlight the innovative character of the project

The exhibitions proposed the development of aesthetics of exchange and communication: the artworks students were building were made not only for humans but also for other organisms, which allow both the audience and the artworks to experience the umwelt of the mutual other. By doing so, we have established new forms of technology-enhanced feedback systems. Thus, we hope to overcome our own, human-centered umwelt to establish shared environments.  We were keenly interested in developing DIYbio methods bridging arts, biology, and technologies in order to support and further engender our conceptual innovations. DIYbio methods were referred in this project to maker culture and Generation M proposed by sociologist Dimitris Papadopoulos in 2014. As suggested in the project name, we were also interested in exploring the perspective of the nonhuman. The words “shared habitat” not only placed us more horizontally with each other but also suggested placing ourselves more on the same level as other, nonhuman organisms. Another point of departure is the artist’s perspective on the field of science and laboratories, breaking down the barrier between the hard sciences and soft sciences/arts, which is crucial to reimagining a more integrated and creative future.  

Please explain how the project led to results or learnings which could be transferred to other interested parties

The starting point for the reflections employed in the project is the confrontation with two different forms of thinking (artistic and scientific) and the need to do justice to both. As the production of artworks is about poiesis, transferred to other interested parties may be the new narratives about and with technology to fill the gap between technology and art. In this respect, scientists and citizens can learn to question and speculate about the world. At the same time, artists can continue to find other uses for technological tools. The main focus of the project was on the citizens' experience of the other: the fellow human, the nonhuman organism, and the machine. For those interested, therefore, the shift in the role of the artist from a central to a mediating figure may be of interest. Also, the decentralization of the artist through his role as a mediator could perhaps be seen as something that enables interaction between citizens. And this mediation could perhaps merge into what we consider to be the contexts of individuals in new environments and the habitats of many species. Without this interaction, we would have neither Uexküll’s umwelt nor Pickering’s dance of agency. With no mediation, there would not be any Shared Habitats either.  

Is an evaluation report or any relevant independent evaluation source available?

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed project has not been proposed for the Awards more than once under the same category and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.