How to Reclaim the Earth?

Study Days of Station 22, within the research cycle “How to Inhabit a Cosmomorphic World?”

Introduction to the Brain Space Laboratory
Initiated by artist Ann Veronica Janssens and Nathalie Ergino in 2009, the Brain Space Laboratory brings together artists and researchers for the purposes of sharing their explorations around vital links of co-existence that unite living beings. Starting from artistic experiments, it favors intuition as a driving force, shared imaginations as a foundation, and collective intelligence as a modus operandi. The intensity of climate upheaval, and the collapse of the living commit us to reorganizing a common world, both human and non-human. Transdisciplinary in nature, the laboratory develops in stages, taking the form of “stations.” Mobile exploratory units, these stations are composed of study days, of “works being studied,” that take place in the IAC and elsewhere.

Since the research cycle “Towards a cosmomorphic world” launched in 2016, the Laboratory has extended its field of exploration to the organic connections that tie the human to the cosmos. From epigenetics to geology, by way of anthropology, the current research generally reveals the porosity that exists between beings and their surroundings. Our conceptions are gradually transforming: the dualist principles of a Western approach that separates man from nature, opposing matter and mind, the innate and the acquired, and makes room for a different “future,” one that opens up a vision of the world which is no longer anthropocentric, but rather one that is “cosmomorphic.” How does the global crisis that we are experiencing force us to transform our ways of being in the world, and how can it urge us to action? How can we now inhabit “cosmomorphic” worlds?

Introduction to Station 22: “How to Reclaim the Earth?”
The simultaneity of ecological and social crises, within an extractivist society that is at the end of its tether, has highlighted the interdependence of beings and their surroundings. Faced with the need for new ways of acting and caring for the Earth, can we truly reclaim it? Can it reclaim itself? Or is it the Earth that reclaims us?

In the group exhibition Reclaim the Earth curated by Daria de Beauvais at Palais de Tokyo (until September 4), the artists develop new relationships with the environment, making us aware that we are not only “facing the landscape,” nor are we simply “on Earth,” but rather “amongst” them, thus causing a shift in a Eurocentric and Anthropocentric vision.

For ecofeminist thinking, and other forms of thought, exploring what connects us to the Earth requires questioning relationships of power, and the nature of the bonds of subsistence that exist between places and those who inhabit them. By questioning the relationships of domination between beings, these thoughts generate other ways of being in the world that stretch beyond existing dualisms.

Station 22 explores the correspondence between struggles for recognition of the Earth, and a collective desire to rally the forces of the pluriverse so as to better inhabit it. 

Program and participation
The study days of Station 22 consist of a series of lectures by researchers and specialists, in connection with the exhibition Reclaim the Earth.

Among the participants of station 22: Linda Boukhris, Marie Fleury, Barbara Glowczewski, Ariel Salleh, Marine Yzquierdo, Benedikte Zitouni et Alice Mortiaux.

All details concerning lectures, speakers and participants are detaileds on the Laboratory’s website.

The study days will take place on June 10 and 11 from 2pm to 6:30pm at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

It is possible to attend on site at Palais de Tokyo (free access with exhibition ticket) or to follow the Station online via Zoom (check laboratoireespacecerveau.eu or i-ac.eu for the connection links).

Save the date: coming next
Station 23 of the Brain Space Laboratory is planned on July 1 and 2 at Centre Pompidou Metz. The Station is entitled Social Plasticities and Libertarian Pedagogies. Check the website for the latest updates on the program and lectures for this Station.