A hybrid workshop on the environmental humanities at the University of Stavanger.
The hybrid online symposium will focus on artistic research within the environmental humanities, and how creative work helps us become attuned to more-than-human forms of intelligence, agency and sentience. The environmental humanities are held together by the core idea that there is an interconnectedness between humans and other being – other animals, minerals, plants, landscapes, ecosystems – and this relationship provides fertile ground for imagining new ethical, aesthetic, and epistemological frameworks that challenge extractive and hierarchical models of knowledge. Exploring and strengthening this core idea around the theme of more-than-human worlds through artistic research, this hybrid online symposium is co-organised by three of Europe’s leading centers: The Greenhouse Center for the Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger, the Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol, and the Environmental Humanities Research Center at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Through this hybrid symposium, we will explore how artists, educators, and scholars can learn from nonhuman beings – not simply as subjects of representation, but as active participants in creative processes – through artistic research practices. Whether through multispecies storytelling, more-than-human invitation, or sensory immersion in the land, we will consider how artistic practices such as drama, textiles, and design technologies can reveal more reciprocal and responsive ways of knowing by engaging with more-than-human ways of being. Through a series of live-streamed talks, we explore answers to the questions:
- How can artistic research give agency to the more-than-human/to non-human actors?
- How can more-than-human agency be translated for human outputs and audiences?
- How can artist research be used to understand and embody the nonhuman?
- How can artistic research with the more-than-human foster engagement with environmental issues?
Featuring:
- Helene Espedal-Selvåg
- Selena Savic
- Ali Mathews
The morning talks aim to synthesise knowledge across diverse mediums, materials, and contexts, to highlight the importance of artistic methodologies in understanding and working with the more-than-human world in meaningful and impactful ways. These will then be explored in more detail through various interactive workshops held locally at each institution (please see individual communications for further details).
Morning Session (Part 1: 10:30 to 12:45)
The morning session will be a hybrid event with physical attendance in Hulda Garborgs hus, HG N-107 at the University of Stavanger.
Register to join online. Once registered, you can join the session online in Zoom.
About the Speakers:
Helene Espedal-Selvåg (b. 1967, Stavanger) is a Norwegian artist whose work bridges the space between nature and humanity. Through a variety of mediums, including video installations, textiles, sculpture and drawing, she explores the intrinsic value of nature and the relationships between humans and the natural world.
Her talk, entitled Hibakujumoku – Messages from the Silent Witnesses: Artistic Conversations with the More-Than-Human, introduces the concept of Hibakujumoku, trees that survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and explores their symbolic significance of resilience and hope. She will share insights into her artistic practice and the Hibakujumoku project, focusing on how she worked with the mother trees, Ilex rotunda and Diospyros kaki, to create an immersive experience at Stavanger Botanical Garden. Finally, she will reflect on how the project encourages empathy and responsibility, with the aim of building a deeper connection between humans and the natural world.
Selena Savic is an Assistant Professor for Proto-history of Artificial Intelligence and Machines in the Arts at the University of Amsterdam. After a PhD at EPFL and an SNSF-funded postdoc at ATTP, TU Vienna, she was senior researcher and the Head of the Make/Sense PhD programme at the Basel Academy of Art and Design. Her research explores digital archives, computational modelling, feminist materialism and posthuman networks in the context of art, design and architecture.
In her talk, “Pedagogies of Invitation,” Savic explores the inclusivity of the posthuman turn in the humanities, extending it to encompass technology such as AI, social media, the Internet, web crawling. Through the lens of 'invitation', she will problematise human-centredness in the design of the environment, engage with bias and uncertainty in computational modelling, and attend to the non-human by questioning the directionality of invitations, drawing on the work of Braidotti, Hayles and Wolfe, and by extension Michel Serres, Donna Haraway and Max Liboiron. In the context of art and education, this perspective shifts the focus from questions on learning from or with more-than-human to teaching how to dream up convivial situations and technologies.
Ali Matthews is an artist, performer and researcher working across performance, music and video. She has made and toured work around the UK as well as to Ireland & Germany. Her work focuses on intersections between the eerie and the humorous, specifically the ways in which speculative fiction and horror genres can more broadly be used as creative stimuli. As a pagan-curious person, she makes work that explores the porosity between human and more than human worlds.
Her research talk "If Matter is Matter, Then What Does It Matter?": Mycology as Metaphor, Mycology as Existentialist Gateway Drug will expand on the research, devising and design process for her touring performance Mushroom Language: A Fungal Gothic (2021-present). Drawing on the fields of mycology, mycoforestry & forest ecology, as well as poetic musings from posthumanist scholars and artistic iconoclasts, Mathews will discuss her journey into finding "mushroom language" as one defined by creative translation, (reverse) anthropomorphism and poetic acts of sensory engagement. She defines “mushroom language” as
a) the ways in which fungi communicate with each other, with trees and with the broader ecosystem;
b) fungal lexicons used by mycological experts with sets of knowledge in lab-based mycology, field/applied mycology, fungal foraging, mycoremediation & sustainable forestry;
c) burgeoning lexicons used by artists working with fungi and forest ecology as subject matter - including my artistic team of collaborator.
Afternoon Session (Part 2): Experiencing Trees Through Charcoal Drawing (14:00 to 16:00)
A workshop led by Helene Espedal-Selvåg in Stavanger Botanical Gardens followed by a classroom session in Hulda Garborgs hus, HG N-107.
The afternoon session will be in-person only. Register for it on Nettskjema.
This two-hour workshop, led by Stavanger-based media artist Helene Espedal-Selvåg, explores the role of trees as more-than-human witnesses and participants in shared histories. The session begins with a visit to the Stavanger Botanical Gardens, where two hibakujumoku—trees grown from seeds that survived the Hiroshima bombing—are growing. At the site, Espedal-Selvåg will share stories from her artistic practice, including reflections on her collaborative project Hibakujumoku – Messages from the Silent Witnesses, and invite participants to share their own memories and experiences of more-than-human interaction.
Back in the classroom, Espedal-Selvåg will lead a practical session, in which participants will get the chance to connect with the trees through the medium of charcoal drawing. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on how their perception of the trees changes through the act of drawing, and how understanding the history of these trees influences our connections with them. The workshop concludes with an open conversation in which participants can ask questions, respond to the materials, and consider the relevance of more-than-human perspectives for art, memory, and environmental understanding. Registration is required for this session.