Opening webinar event
November 12, 2020, 12:00–1:00pm PST (3:00-4:00pm EST)
Register for Zoom link here

My new project, Vegetal Entangling is a multimedia webpage love-letter to plants. It reflects on human-plant relationships and documents my practice of “plant noticing”. This exhibition, which asks, What Makes Us Human? provides a great context for my project:

Some of the inquiry conducted by these collaborators examines what it means to be something other than human, simultaneously helping reveal what makes us human. How do we talk about our humanness? Which of our taxonomies intersect? And how can (virtual) space facilitate more of these intersections? How are humans furthering creative, scientific, and scholarly research while responding to the pandemic in our institutions, in our bodies, in our environments and in our communities? How can researchers be alone together and work collectively — questioning, testing, and collaborating during COVID to educate communities at the intersection of art, culture, science, and politics? 

Curated by Jennifer Parker, artist and professor of Art and Digital Arts & New Media at the University of California Santa Cruz, this exhibition showcases the multifaceted approach of artists, humanists, and scientists working across disciplines to investigate art and genetics. Spearheaded by OpenLab Collaborative Research Center in collaboration with the Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery in the Arts Division, UC Santa Cruz.

Collaborators:
A.M. Darke, Alexa Burrell, Amy Youngs, Angélica Dass, ASSIST Lab, Avital Meshi, Brad Necyk, Center for Public Philosophy, Danielle Siembieda, Dorothy Santos, Enrique Leal, the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, Gina Czarnecki, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Jenny Reardon, Jessie Kendall-Bar, Karolina Karlic, OpenLab Collaborative Research Center, UC Santa Barbara Gaucho OpenLab Initiative, Paloma Medina, Phylum (Carlos Castellanos, Johnny DiBlasi, Bello Bello), The Algae Society, The Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History, UCSC Astrobiology, UCSC Earth Futures Initiatives, UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Zac Zimmer, Zach Corse

What does it mean to have an ecoconsciousness? The works here offer multiple answers to that question. ecoconsciousness measures our interconnectivity with the natural world. It celebrates our links to the animals with whom we share the planet, to the trees, fruits, vegetables, herbs and insects that make life possible, to the land and waters that bear witness to our best and worst impulses and to the ecological systems that sustain us all. It encompasses our awareness both of the beauty of nature and the devastating horrors created by our efforts to exploit it. It manifests itself in artworks that bring the perilous consequences of our actions to our attention through striking images, immersive installations, evocative performances and rituals and practical proposals. It engages with fields as diverse as science, technology, poetry, politics, history, anthropology, art history and futurism. And it poses questions about our place in the cosmos with wit, sorrow, anger and hope.

Eleanor Heartney, Juror

The ecoconsciousness catalogue can be viewed on ecoartspace’s website. Print versions can be ordered there.

Acquired immunity displays artworks arising from our residencies and invited artists. We bring together artworks that were created as a response to challenges from the local environment: natural, social, and other artists. A response that we compare to the way the immune system responds to new challenges.

Marta de Menezes, curator

More about the show, events, and the Mozilla Hubs link are over on the Ars Electronica page.