• Ravi Agarwal
• Lisa Baraitser
• Felipe Castelblanco
• Maria Chehonadskih
• Shadreck Chirikure
• Myung Ae Choi
• L. Sasha Gora
• Orit Halpern
• Valentina Karga
• John Kim
• Francine M.G. McCarthy
• Margarida Mendes
• Claire Pentecost
• Jahnavi Phalkey
• Patricia Reed
• Nishant Shah
• Adania Shibli
• Fernando Silva e Silva
• Rebecca Snedeker
• Nikiwe Solomon
• Jenna Sutela
• Koki Tanaka
• Simon Turner
• Mark Williams
• Mi You
• Jan Zalasiewicz
• Gary Zhexi Zhang

Where is the Planetary?

A Gathering | In Collaboration with Koki Tanaka

• Friday, Oct 14, 2022

  7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

  Where is the Planetary? Day 1

  Auditorium

  The first evening sets up the search for a model of sustainable collaboration under planetary conditions: What diverse worldviews underlie the way we deal with the planet’s crises? How can a common political and social agency emerge from this? In an experimental setting designed by artist Koki Tanaka, scientists, scholars and artists share various perspectives on planetary practice: from zooming out to the cosmic, grounding back to our geological Earth and personal biographies, to exploring the ethics of repair and care and the vision of a second primordial soup for planetary survival.

  7 pm
  Planetary Habitability Part 1
  Presentations
  With Koki Tanaka, Lisa Baraitser, L. Sasha Gora, Jan Zalasiewicz (remote)

  We become aware of the planetary at the moment certain modes of life bring the life-support systems of Earth to their limits. But how these thresholds are breached, measured, or felt varies greatly depending on the ideologies and worldviews that underlie them or the material limitations they effect.

  The evening begins with a search for the location of the planetary, informed by diverse practices like care and geological research. Over the course of the evening, Koki Tanaka will introduce his practice alongside models for developing planetary collaboration which will take place the following day.

  8 pm
  Planetary Habitability Part 2
  Presentations
  With L. Sasha Gora, Jahnavi Phalkey, Patricia Reed, Jenna Sutela, Fernando Silva e Silva, Nikiwe Solomon, Simon Turner, Mi You, Mark Williams, Gary Zhexi Zhang

  How do different social and political assumptions behind any understanding of planetary boundaries affect the possibilities for understanding each other, the measurability of the planet at multiple scales, and the possibility of agreeing on and implementing effective countermeasures?

  A group discussion between participants reimagines collaboration from the chaotic processes of a primordial soup. The session then concludes with a collaborative game for finding common understanding about different concepts through free association and playing with the differences produced as a form of measurement of assumptions and epistemologies.

  9 pm
  Planetary Habitability Part 3
  Presentations
  With Ravi Agarwal, Maria Chehonadskih, Myung-Ae Choi, Kai van Eikels, continent. (Jamie Allen, Paul Boshears, Nina Jäger, Lital Khaikin, Anna-Luisa Lorenz), John Kim, Francine McCarthy, Claire Pentecost, Adania Shibli, Rebecca Snedeker

  How can our thinking about problems of governance and the politics of planetary concerns benefit from a tentative shift toward alternative behavioral patterns? Testing, as humans, acting as a swarm; attempting to operate as a group but leaving central coordination behind … What happens, then, when we meet another entity or constellation of people, acting under their own, different, individually paced parameters? How can we tell stories about these moments of collision between concepts of worlds, and worlds of concepts? Can we find new entry points to write alternative – or even better, planetary – stories that account for this plurality?

   

• Saturday, Oct 15, 2022

  12:00 pm - 10:00 pm

  Where is the Planetary? Day 2

  Auditorium

  On the second day of the event, the search for a common planetary practice becomes tangible. The five research questions are linked to a series of activities. The idea of a “primordial broth” serves as inspiration for a jointly designed recipe for the conditions of planetary habitability. By accumulating and recomposing ideas and material from cultural production and the built environment, participants pose questions about what needs our care, what should be preserved, and what should be left behind. Equitable, scalable processes of negotiation and deliberation are discussed into literal exhaustion. Collaboratively, participants write a sort of planetary script. All of this happens embedded in a film shoot led by Koki Tanaka. The running camera co-determines the course of the day.

  12 noon–4 pm
  What are the conditions for habitability?
  Facilitated by L. Sasha Gora
  With Patricia Reed, Fernando Silva e Silva, Simon Turner, Mi You

  “Mock Soup,” “Red Beans and Ricely Yours” and “Bastard Borsch”: this group tackles questions of planetary habitability through culinary cooperation. The simple question of to what extent different recipes may or may not successfully combine into one opens up space to discuss a seemingly unsolvable problem: How can we foster effective planetary collaboration despite differences, antagonisms and unequal historical responsibilities?

  12 noon–10 pm
  How do we tell planetary stories?
  Facilitated by continent. (Jamie Allen, Paul Boshears, Nina Jäger, Lital Khaikin, Anna-Luisa Lorenz)
  With Ravi Agarwal, Myung-Ae Choi, John Kim, Margarida Mendes, Claire Pentecost, Fernando Silva e Silva, Rebecca Snedeker, Nikiwe Solomon

  The shortest distance between two points is often the most unbearable path to take, and slower might be the fastest way to get “there.” Many stories of scarcity and strife impel us toward callous growth and rapacious progress. Certain narratives of the Anthropocene presume dominion of this planet and its plenitudes—yet such (post)scripts are composed too hastily.

  Presenting a durational intervention for Where is the Planetary?, the experimental publishing collective continent. works here and hereafter through the practice of détente. This group of artists, technologists, designers and editors proposes détente as a rest, pause, or expectant repose that occurs, creates, and accommodates. Malleable and anticipative, could the delayed entanglement of détente suggest adaptive otherways—other stories that are otherwise?

  1–4pm
  How can habitability be measured?
  Facilitated by Gary Zhexi Zhang
  With Jahnavi Phalkey, Jenna Sutela, Nikiwe Solomon, Mark Williams

  Measurement is riddled with assumptions. Any attempt to assess or qualify how habitability is ascertained or evaluated always carries political ideologies, disciplinary hang-ups and cultural perspectives. This session explores forms of measurement and the worlds they measure through a discussion punctuated by second-order reflections facilitated by a therapist. The aim here is to heighten and escalate awareness of the distance between different concepts, perspectives and positions.

  5–9 pm
  What planetary damage can be repaired?
  Facilitated by Koki Tanaka, Lisa Baraitser
  With Mohammad Al Attar, Orit Halpern, Valentina Karga, Margarida Mendes, Nishant Shah, Simon Turner

  What are the bodily, social and psychic preconditions for creating possibilities of repair? This group enacts an intimate exercise of sculptural practice and reflection. Transforming ideas of ‘work’ as they collectively ‘work with’ problems of maintenance and care, participants build and rebuild an object assemblage that spans several meters—paying care-ful attention to the atmosphere around them and the materials in their hands. The patience to begin again and again will remain a priority, even when such repair aims at world-spanning ecosystems and the planetary limits we have repeatedly breached in the global era.

  6–10 pm
  Who gets to decide what actions are taken?
  Facilitated by Kai van Eikels
  With Maria Chehonadskih, John Kim, Francine McCarthy, Adania Shibli

  What are the strengths and weaknesses of our bodies in terms of making collective decisions? How can embodied knowledge help us change the fate of this planet without recourse to sovereign power? Can we decide things together through forms of debate and assessment of vital questions that are based neither on consensus nor on dissensus but rather on making us move along the line(s) of a different, more constellative We? And how can such a collective dynamic that emerges between some of us be translated to a planetary scale? The group will try out a series of corporeal practices that challenge established habits of decision-making, until the point of exhaustion – and beyond, because fatigue may not be the end but rather the starting point of a new ecological-political movement.

• Sunday, Oct 16, 2022

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

  Where is the Planetary? Day 3

  Auditorium

  Day 3 is dedicated to the search for coordinates, overlaps, convergences and tensions that arise when myriad cosmologies converge around a common intent. In one reading and four rounds of conversation, participants start from their collaboratively developed models from the previous day, engaging in discussions focused on the importance of social principles for planetary practice and its potential to incorporate conditions of difference. They will also touch upon the notion of collective responsibility, pulling from the participants’ Research Notes.

  12 noon–1.30 pm
  How do we tell planetary stories?
  Stories Review & Collaborative (post) Scriptwriting Workshop
  Moderated by continent. (Jamie Allen, Paul Boshears, Nina Jäger, Lital Khaikin, Anna-Luisa Lorenz)
  With Ravi Agarwal, Myung-Ae Choi, John Kim, Margarida Mendes, Claire Pentecost, Fernando Silva e Silva, Rebecca Snedeker, Nikiwe Solomon

  In a process attempting to compose and collect a fragmented (post)script between Friday and Sunday, the experimental publishing collective continent. and friends describe a tentative, delayed and stuttered collaborative process of storytelling, narrative-making, retracing and recomposing. Through connected and disconnected fragments, soft scenarios and slow (post)script elements that emerged through the conversations, encounters and trajectories between the space, place and people of the Where is the Planetary? event, they ask how and if we can recount narratives about planetary existence. That is, how do we tell planetary stories?

  From 2 pm
  Planetary Compositions
  Discussions

  One finds the planetary in manifold compositions—in different cohorts, from different perspectives and different scales, addressing different concerns. This is certainly both an asset and a liability for any type of planetary collaboration. On this last day of Where is the Planetary?, participants split into new groups to discuss their individual approaches to planetary concerns while reflecting on the collaborative exercises from the previous days. In four discussions, the participants will produce new questions that incite different approaches to and new opportunities for collaboration.

  2 pm
  With Maria Chehonadskih, Shadreck Chirikure, Francine McCarthy, Claire Pentecost, Mi You
  Moderated by Adania Shibli

  3 pm
  With Ravi Agarwal, Orit Halpern, Valentina Karga, Mark Williams, Jahnavi Phalkey
  Moderated by Nishant Shah

  4 pm
  With Felipe Castelblanco, Myung-Ae Choi, John Kim, Fernando Silva da Silva, Simon Turner
  Moderated by Patricia Reed

  5 pm
  With Mohammad Al Attar, Margarida Mendes, Rebecca Snedeker, Nikiwe Solomon
  Moderated by Mark Williams