Vrijdag 25 mrt. 2016: Biocentric Readings

programme in English

With: Anastasija Pandilovska, Yedda Morrison & Misha de Ridder

Animated by Yedda Morrison’s biocentric reading of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, this evening will strive to apply this reading strategy to other works. Inviting the audience to participate and insisting on new configurations of material agencies, the evening will investigate the social construction of nature and the human logic of cancerous expansion.

What does the 'whiting out of man' mean and how can poetry contribute to unmaking the excessive presence of man and foregrounding, giving voice to nature’s latent narratives? How does one enter the process of “turning a story into a picture” and how can the social constructions of nature come to have different meanings; more productively, more creatively?

Still from 'Raftsundet' (2011) by Misha de Ridder.

The evening will emphasize that even within the process of erasing 'the human', some kind of subjectivity is involved (and even required). So even when we “bring into focus that which has been rendered scenic, passive or ornamental", even when we try to negotiate symbolic or anthropocentric meanings of nature, and witness and articulate its immanent configurations instead, we can only mute the volume of everything human, all the references to humankind.

This means that we should critically engage with representations of nature and that we should resist constructing an organic narrative that builds on binary oppositions of nature-culture and nature-artifice. Rather than asserting the mystery/mythology of an original natural state to which we could return, we could thwart the complicated violent image of nature even more and insist to “attend to the latent narratives of any organic, non-human remains

programme in English
start: 20:30, doors open: 20:00
entrance fee: € 7 / 5 (with discount card)
Reservations: website Perdu