11/04/2023, 18.00
Zoom
participants: Krystyna Jedrzejewska-Szmek, Ana Kuzmanić, Tery Žeželj
moderation: Olga Roszkowska
organisation: Kurziv, Maska Ljubljana, Krytyka Polityczna
Conversation Reparative Explorations: More-than-human potentials is the second in a series of online conversations devoted to the quest for cultural responses that can work towards repair of the political and ecological crises of today. It will be held on Zoom and Facebook, on April 11 at 6 pm CEST.
More-than-human collaborations involve relationships with diverse actors, including non-human animals, plants, fungi, weather forces, and water bodies. These relationships require flexibility, attunement to different temporal and spatial scales, and an ability to work with the unpredictable and unknown. To nourish these relationships, we must develop new languages, knowledge, and practices that recognize and make room for the non-translatable.
The More-than-human potentials conversation will explore how looking beyond human subjectivity and delving into more-than-human collaborations can offer reparative potential to the crises of today.
The conversation will bring together contributions by biologist and visual artist Krystyna Jedrzejewska-Szmek (Poland), visual artist and researcher Ana Kuzmanić (Croatia) and dramaturg and artistic researcher Tery Žeželj (Slovenia). The event will be moderated by climate-oriented arts and education expert Olga Roszkowska (Poland).
Krystyna Jedrzejewska-Szmek is a visual artist and biologist based in Poland. A graduate of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and Biology at the University of Warsaw, Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek worked for many years in the Botanic Garden of the University of Warsaw. Her interest revolve around the complex web of relationships and tensions between humans and the “more-than-human world”, which is created by beings such as trees, toads, mosses and mushrooms. Her artistic practice bridges art and science. A member of the ZAKOLE Group, which focuses on finding ways to tell and experience areas such as wetlands and to show the perspective of the creatures inhabiting them.
Ana Kuzmanić is an artist from Croatia. Her practice is based on research and collaborative work. Her work actively problematizes everyday life, examines tensions between the individual and the social, politics and poetics, and seeks potentials for change. Employing a broad range of media such as public intervention, sound installation, artist books, print media, performance, and video, her work is often site-specific and time-specific. Alongside own practice, she works with the international arts collective Eastern Surf and works as an Associate Professor at the University in Split. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and received her Master’s degree from the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. She is one of the founders and a member of the international collective Eastern Surf. Since 2009, she has worked as a teaching assistent at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture, and Geodesy, University of Split. In her work, Ana focuses of everyday lives of people, exploring questions related to collectiveness, possibilites of joint work, pedagogy, and education of the young. For her work, she has received several awards including the Radoslav Putar Award in 2018 and the Visual Art Award from the City of Edinburgh Council in 2012.
Tery Žeželj is a dramaturg that holds a BA in Dramaturgy and Contemporary Performing Arts from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT) in Ljubljana, and a Master’s degree in Contemporary Theatre, Dance, and Dramaturgy from the University of Utrecht. She finished the program with a MA thesis More-Than-Human Practices: Feminist Environmental Potentials of Working with More-Than-Humans. Currently, she has a two-year research Multispecies Landscapes on the possibilities for reconceptualizing the relationship with the environment with Bunker Institute and a longer artistic research the day after yesterday with Madison Jolliffe. Besides that, she works as a freelancer through different relationships: as a dramaturg, editor, productional ally, and artistic board member in Glej Theatre in Ljubljana.