Storying Terminal Ecologies: On Death, Queerfeminist Biophilosophy and Art
2019 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
In the contemporary context of environmental crises and degradation, certain habitats become unliveable, leading to the death of individuals, populations and species extinction. While bioscience emphasises interdependency and relationality as crucial characteristics of life shared by all organisms, Western cultural imaginaries tend to draw dividing lines between humans and nonhumans, particularly evident in the context ofdeath. On the one hand, death appears as a process common toall forms of life; on the other, as an event that distinguishes human from other organisms. Against this background, this paper explores how contemporary art—in particular, the series of worksThe Absence of Alice (2008–2011) by Australian new-media andbioartist Svenja Kratz—challenges the normative and human-exceptionalist concept of death. By employing queerfeminist biophilosophy as a strategy that focuses on relations, processes and transformations instead of ‘essences’, the paper examines the ways Kratz’s works deterritorialise the conventional concept ofdeath.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2019.
Keywords [en]
death; the non/living; terminal ecologies; bioart; Svenja Kratz
National Category
Visual Arts Other Humanities not elsewhere specified Cultural Studies Gender Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-173061OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-173061DiVA, id: diva2:1524041
Conference
“Dying at the Margins: A Critical Exploration of Material-Discursive Perspectives on Death and Dying”, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 26-27 September, 2019
Projects
Ecologies of Death: Environment, Body and Ethics in Contemporary Art
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2017-00467
Note
Keynote lecture presented at “Dying at the Margins: A Critical Exploration of Material-Discursive Perspectives on Death and Dying”, 26-27 September 2019, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, SE.
https://www.kth.se/blogs/hist/2019/12/report-dying-at-the-margins-workshop/
2021-01-302021-01-302021-02-04Bibliographically approved