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The Posthumanities Hub Activity Report Jan 2018-Jun 2019

Summary The Posthumanities Hub has since March 2018 its main institutional home at KTH Royal Institute of Technology where our founding director Cecilia Åsberg works (80%) as Guest Professor in Science and Technology Studies focusing on Gender and Environment at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. We still have an institutional leg at Linköping University (LiU) –-- (even while, this year, our co-director Marietta Radomska is working hard and mostly hailing from University of Helsinki, Finland) --- and tentacular collaborations with other universities, for instance The Posthumanism Research Institute at Brock University, Canada. Together with Pi Prof Christine Daigle at Brock University, we engage since 2017 in the research network of Posthumanism Research Network (PRN), funded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Early this year Prof Daigle visited us at KTH in Sweden, and we have seen her do key notes and interventions in the Hub events of the last year. The Posthumanities Hub and its Networks The Posthumanities Hub functions, besides being a research group, also as a network of networks. For instance, we inaugurated many years ago the Posthumanities International Network (PIN) with collaborations in the Netherlands, the UK and in Singapore, now part of the Canadian-led PRN as well. We are also very happy to have “spawned”, from the Hub, the Queer Death Studies Network, whom this fall welcomes you all to its first international conference 4-5 November. In addition, we are surely proud to be part of the Eco/Deco network, the Eco and Bioart Research Network and of course Gexcel, and it is such a cool thing to be part of the new Design and Posthumanism Network headed by Thomas Laurien at HDK Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg. And of the State of the Art! Education and visiting scholars Let us not forget that we do a lot of teaching as well! At KTH we were really proud to inherit Gender & Technology (AK2202), a flag ship course of the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. Running in spring 2019, with teachers Cecilia Åsberg and Vera Weetzel (and Åsa Johansson and Marietta Radomska), and with 14 very dedicated students doing MA’s in engineering, this course was a major success. Åsberg has of course been involved in other teaching activities and courses at KTH as well, often talking on gender, environment and sustainability. And Åsberg have been giving talks, PhD responses, and key notes around, at Swedish universities, art events and at international research conferences abroad, for instance at University of Cardiff and Bleking Insitute of Technology, DOMA in Gothenburg and on Swedish Radio. We have also done several joint panels, thanks to Marietta Radomska and Erich Berger of Finnish BioArt Society, for instance in 2018 at the Merry CRISPR workshop, SOLU Bioart Society in Helsinki (Vera Weetzel, Marietta Radomska and Cecilia Åsberg), or at the State of the Art, Silkeborg Art Centre, Denmark (Janna Holmstedt, Cecilia Åsberg and Marietta Radomska).

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Photo from Merry CRISPR panel (Finland), and second panel photo on us debating the ”we of the Anthropocene” (Denmark).

You can read more details about our networks on our website. We also had professor Hayden Lorimer of Glasgow University here for a stint this spring. And next year we will welcome more visiting scholars. We wrote also at least two really major grant applications this spring, one for MISTRA’s call for environmental communication (60 m SEK) with the KTH History Division, and one for the Horizon 2020’s Societal Challenges and the Arts (30 mSEK), and that provided us with even more networking opportunities. Basically, it has been a fantastic year and a half at KTH with new and old collaborations across disciplines, paving the way for the reinvented, new humanities of societal relevance. January 2018-June 2019 Our most recent events and funded projects include, but are not limited to: • The Posthumanities Hub Official Re-Launch at KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, 28 May

2018. The program represented a smorgasbord of the many funded research projects and activities – and of course some of the collaborating scholars – working together within the Posthumanities Hub. “Practicing posthumanities” –Prof. Matthew Fuller, Goldsmiths University of London, UK and, The Posthumanities International Network, gave the introductory lecture on "Practicing posthumanities", with commentary by Renée Valiquette, PhD, Nipissing University, Canada. Read more >>

• EASCLE Webinar on ‘Toxic Embodiment’ by Prof. Cecilia Åsberg and Dr. Marietta Radomska, 25 August 2018. The webinar engaged with the topic of toxic embodiment as our always-already environed technobodies, and how we are shaped by health norms and toxic realities that put into question the notions of health and disease, vulnerability and well-being, as well as life/death, and the dis/ability of the ‘natural’ human body. Read more >>

• State of the Art – A Multidisciplinary Collaboration Facing the Anthropocene, 10-13 October 2018, Silkeborg, DK. The seminar and network meeting organised by The Independent AIR in collaboration with Bioart Society, The Posthumanities Hub and Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology. The event gathered Nordic and Baltic artists, writers, researchers and art organisations in order to discuss the role of art and multidisciplinary collaborations in the light of the current global ecological crises. The themes of this year’s seminar were: Deep time, Language and the ‘We’ of the Anthropocene. Read more >>

• Herbaria 3.0 – a digital citizen humanities project collecting the intertwined stories of plants and people, lead by the Posthumanities Hub researcher Lauren LaFauci, assistant professor of gender studies and environmental humanities at Linköping University, in collaboration with Tina Gianquitto (Colorado School of Mines, USA), Dawn Sanders (Göteborgs universitet), Maura Flannery (emerita, St. John’s University, USA), Terry Hodge (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA). Read more>>

• On Common Ground: Synthesizing Feminist Environmental Humanities for Climate Change Action (2018-2019, funded by Formas, “Synthesis Grant"). Pi: Cecilia Åsberg with co-pi: Lauren LaFauci. The research first surveys and synthesizes the state of the environmental humanities (EH) field from its origins to the present, with special attention to gender studies and feminist interventions that underpin both its foundational and its current insights. Building upon this largely academic work, we in the second half of this project focus on creating “translational humanities” for interested stakeholders. In transforming the academic syntheses into an accessible handbook for climate actors and to several new Wikipedia entries, we enact the very activist work that we believe is foundational to creating real-world solutions to climate change.

• Storying Exposure: An Experimental Workshop in Environmental Humanities Writing (2018-2019, funded by Seed Box, LiU). This collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative lead by Cecilia Åsberg and Hayden Lorimer with Astrida Neimanis, has gathered Environmental Humanities in intensive workshops

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in Scotland (4-7 Sep, 2018) and Sweden (7-9 May, 2019), where they have had the opportunity to enter into concentrated conversation, skill-sharing, and experimental writing praxis together. The project operates on the principle that for academic researchers in the Environmental Humanities, writing creatively and communicating powerfully represent the most trusted means available for ‘facing the planetary’ (Connolly 2017). Thematically, it engages with recent places and theorisations of exposure, toxicity, stress and vulnerability.

Storying Exposure worskshop in Scotland at Spireslack, an opencast surface mine in Ayrshire, and at Kilmahew St Peter's, a former Roman Catholic seminary near Cardross, Argyll and Bute. Photos: Janna Holmstedt

• Thinking Through Matter – exploring BioArt and design in a Norwegian contemporary context, 2 April

2019, Ås, NO. Symposium organised by NOBA Norwegian BioArt Arena. Keynote delivered by Marietta Radomska/The Posthumanities Hub. Read more>>

• ‘(Micro)chimerism and the temporality of life: rethinking the bio-imaginary’ talk by Prof. Margrit Shildrick, hosted by Marietta Radomska/The Posthumanities Hub and organised by Bioart Society, 26 April 2019, SOLU Bioart Society, Helsinki, FI. Read more>>

• Open Humanities Lab Symposium: New Humanities & the Anthropocene, 14-15 May 2019, Stockholm (funded by Seed Box, LiU). A two-day event where we asked if the new humanities, transformative and integrative in nature, can become not just relevant to society but also enact real change? Can we have research that is participatory, communicable, and, as Rosi Braidotti puts it, ‘worthy of our times’? Braidotti delivered her thoughts as did 24 other speakers in lively panels. Keynote speakers were Hayden Lorimer, Glasgow University, UK, and Norie Neumark, LaTrobe University, AU. You can find an introduction and the full program here.

• Queer Death Studies: Searching Points of Exit from Hegemonic Narratives, 28 May 2019, University of Jyväskylä, FI. Seminar with Margrit Shildrick and Marietta Radomska (The Posthumanities Hub) Read more>>

• The Third International Queer Death Studies Workshop “Death Matters: On Death and Dying in a Queer Context”, 30-31 May, Linköping University, Sweden

• Popularizing environmental humanities: Film and media resources for young adults pondering the stakes for the future (ongoing research communication project, funded by FORMAS). This project is the brain child of Lotten Wiklund, science journalist at Kajman Media, and prof Cecilia Åsberg with The Posthumanities Hub. The project is implemented together with a group of third grade students attending Samhällsvetenskaps-programmet at Bromma gymnasium in Stockholm, and the researchers The Posthumanities Hub. The purpose is to explore methods for communicating environmental humanities in a digital and social media context.

Popularizing Environmental Humanities workshop, organized by Lotten Wiklund and Dr. Janna Holmstedt, with students at Bromma Gymnasium in collaboration with Prof. Cecilia Åsberg and PhD candidates Vera Weetzel and Jesse Peterson. Film stills: Karin Wegsjö.

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• Toxic Embodiment. Funded by Formas and Mistra 2014-2019. A research strand headed by Cecilia Åsberg for the Seed Box programme at LiU. Concerns around health and the state of our planet today take on a much wider set of issues (and a wider set of bodies) as we interact with climate change, antibiotics, and untested chemical cocktails through the food we eat, the make-up we wear, the new sofas we sit it in or the environments we dwell in. “Toxic Embodiment” gathers, bridges and advances a unique multi-disciplinary skill set of gender and justice methodologies across the arts and sciences. Toxic Embodiment collects also a set of international scholars from major European research hubs, offering important and under-researched aspects on gender, health and climate change from interdisciplinary and bridge-building gender and justice methodologies. Readmoreaboutthe Seed Box projects on Toxic Embodiment here!

Photos from Toxic Embodiment Workshop in 2017 (org. Cecilia Åsberg and Olga Cielemecka) with PhD students from KTH, LiU and international scholars such as Rosi Braidotti (NL), Stacey Alaimo (US), Matthew Fuller (UK), Nina Lykke (DK), Olga Gourniova (UK), Ericka Johnson (SE) and Katie King (US).

• A special issue section of the open access journal Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press) also came out because of this research focus on toxic embodiment, edited by Olga Cielemeçka and Cecilia Åsberg. As did several article publications by Marietta Radomska, Cecilia Åsberg and other “hubbers”, for instance - Radomska, Marietta (2018). "Promises of Non/Living Monsters and Uncontainable Life." in Somatechnics 8.2 (2018): 215-231.

• A Feminist Companion to the Posthumanities, Åsberg & Braidotti 2018 with contributions by Karen Barad, Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, Stacy Alaimo, Astrida Neimanis, Matthew Fuller, and many others. There is no way we can list all our publications here, but we are contemplating creating a resources page of publications on the Hub website. So watch that space!

• Checking-in with Deep Time Clocks – re-configuring intergenerational justice and hope. Funded by Formas 2017-2020. Pi: Christina Fredengren, co-pi: Cecilia Åsberg. This project aim to deal with the major research question of how to better re-tie the material and immaterial knots between past, present and future generations, and to suggest ways forward for moving towards innovative ways of checking in with our post-natural and materializing clocks. The project is methodologically innovative and aspires to have high impact on the approaches to sustainability, intergenerational justice and care in post-natural heritage management.

Photo of Tekniska Verken (by Cecilia Åsberg), situated in Östergötland on top of iron age sanctuary and ancient heritage site, but also creating the heritage of the future.

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The Posthumanities Hub Seminar Series, 2018-2019: We've had the great pleasure to have had the following guests and seminars (in chronological order): the new Hub-member Dr. Janna Holmstedt, artist and researcher, “Are You Ready for a Wet Live-in? Explorations into Listening” gave a talk at LiU; Prof. Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawaii, “Atlas of (Remote) Islands and Sea Level Rise"; Prof. Christine Daigle, Brock University, Canada, “Our Posthuman Vulnerability: a material feminist inquiry”; Dr. Tara Mehrabi, Karlstad University, SE and University of Turku, FI, “Queer Ecologies of Death”; Dr. Marietta Radomska, Linköping University, "Deterritorialising Death: Queer(ing) Methodology and Contemporary Art"; Dr. Line Henriksen, University of Copenhagen, “Weird Ecologies – Stories from the Void and the Web”; Prof. Thomas Hallock, University of South Florida, USA, "Signing Nature, Memorializing Plantations: Public Memory on the Bartram Trail"; Dr. Lauren LaFauci, Linköping University, “Histories and Perceptions of Climate in Early American Literature and Culture”; Camila Marambio, curator and PhD Candidate at MADA in Melbourne, Australia and Prof. Nina Lykke, Linköping University, "Decolonialising Mourning Through Speculative Wonder and Unthinkable Questions? With the Selk’nam ‘Hain’ and Its Layers of Lostness"; and last but not least Dr. Adam Wickberg, KTH, "Coloniality, Media and the Anthropocene in Early Americas". Other events where Hub researchers have been involved 2018: • Lauren LaFauci's Talk: Presenting “the body” as a “keyword” for Environmental Humanities, 22

March, C19’s Climate conference, Albuquerque, NM, USA • Feminist STS meeting: Nationell Forskningsplattform för Feministisk Teknovetenskap, 23 March,

12.00-17.00, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden • Olga Cielemecka is visiting researcher at Posthumanist Research Institute funded by ESRC (The

Environmental Sustainability Research Centre at Brock University), 30 Mar-16 Apr. 2018, Brock University, Canada

• Mini-symposium “Becoming with Alien Encounters and Speculative Story-Telling” (speakers Katja Aglert, Nina Lykke, Line Henriksen, Marietta Radomska), 5 april 2018, 13:00 – 17:00, Linköping University, Sweden

• Humanities Open House Day, Stockholm University, 11 Apr. 2018, University of Stockholm, Sweden • Inaugural Posthumanism Research Network workshop, 14 – 15 apr, at Posthumanities Research

Centre, Brock University, Canada • Higher seminar with Hub researcher "Can water die? pollution, algae, and collapse in the Baltic Sea”

with Jesse Petersen, KTH, and Heather Anne Swanson, Århus Uni, DK, 16 Apr, 13:15 – 14:45, at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

• Official online launch of Herbaria 3.0 (Seed-Box-seed-money-funded), 20 Apr • “Uses and Abuses of Thoreau” symposium hosted by Gothenburg EH Network, 2 – 4 maj, Gothenburg

University, Sweden • Symposium Changing Animal Bodies: Animal breeding in changing social and environmental context, 8

– 9 maj, Uppsala University, Sweden • Multispecies science collaboration, 22 maj, Linköping University, Sweden • Deep Time and Deep Water Symposium at Stockholm University, 24 maj, University of Stockholm,

Sweden • The “Queering Ecologies of Death” two-session panel, 13-16 June, the SLSAeu GREEN conference in

Copenhagen, DK • New Materialism Conference "Urban Matters", 20 – 22 Jun, Utrecht University, Netherlands • Working meeting for State of the Art Network and seminar, 28 June, Linköping University, Sweden • Earth: a Non/Life (a multispecies retreat), at Saari Well, Turku, FI, 13 – 15 juli, Turku, Finland • “(Un)Common Worlds” conference in Turku, FI, 7 – 9 Aug, University of Turku, Finland • Rosi Braidotti’s Summer School “Posthuman Ethics, Pain and Endurance”, 20 – 24 Aug, Utrecht

University, Netherlands • Creative Writing Workshop: Alien Encounters 2 (closed event), 22 – 23 Aug • The Second International Symposium “Eco/Decolonial Arts: Re-imagining Futures”, 28 Aug, 10:15 –

18:00, Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden

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• Deterritorialising the Future: A symposium on heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene, 14 Sep, 10:30 – 18:30, Senate House, Bloomsbury, London, UK

• Mediocene: Media history and the Anthropocene, 2 Oct, 12:00 – 17:00, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

• First Baltic Conference on the Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences (BALTEHUMS)8 – 9 Oct. Riga, Latvia

• Quite Frankly: It’s a Monster Conference presented by SymbioticA and Somatechnics 18 – 19 Oct, The University of Western Australia

• Making Change Through the Humanities, 22 – 23 Oct, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

• Christina Research Seminar – SKY Advanced Research Seminar - Talk by Dr. Marietta Radomska "On Bioart, the Non/Living and Promises of Monstrous Futures", 23 Oct, 16:00 – 18:00, University of Helsinki, Finland

• Bioartsociety: SOLU Art Space opening, 9 Nov, 14:00 – lör, den 10 november 2018, 15:00, Helsingfors, Finland

• "Getting by: negotiating future livelihoods in the arts", 13 Nov, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland

• Co-coordination (Tara Mehrabi) of and participation (Marietta Radomska) in the workshop “New Materialisms: Matter(ing) and Methodologies” at The Gender Studies Conference 2018: Trans in Transit, 22-24 Nov, Turku, Finland

• Feminism and Technology Conference, 3 – 4 Dec, Cardiff, UK • Merry CRISPR 2, 10 – 14 Dec, Aalto University, Finland 2019: • Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practice Conference, 23 – 25 Jan, Linneaus university, Växjö,

Sweden • Digital Humanities Stockholm, 29 Jan, 13:00 – 17:00, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden • Feminist in a Software Lab, 30 Jan, 13:00 – 15:00, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm,

Sweden • Hate Online: Analyzing Hate Platforms, Fighting Hate Crimes, 30 Jan, 15:00 – 17:00, KTH Royal Institute

of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden • NOBA Norwegian BioArt Arena symposium, 2 Apr, 08:30 – 15:15, Vitenparken Campus Ås, Norway • Weird Ecologies: The Monster Network Workshop 4 – 5 Apr, Tampere, Finland • SOLU Talk by Prof. Margrit Shildrick on "(Micro)chimerism and the temporality of life: rethinking the

bio-imaginary", 25 Apr, 17:00 – 19:00, SOLU art space, Helsinki, Finland • Disgust Network & CRISES Project seminar, 28 May, 12:00 – 15:00, Jyväskylä University, Finland

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