curating.org

Lecturer: Anja Lückenkemper

How can we overcome the dichotomies between human and non-human entities, between natural and cultural spheres, between a living and a non-living world? How can we emphasizes the importance of emotional and relational connections, promoting a sense of intimacy, respect, and care for the natural world?

A thinking along the lines of ecofeminism and queer ecology helps us to challenge dominant narratives and power structures that govern our relationship with the natural world. Applying feminist and queer methodologies, both approaches share a concern for ethical relationships with the environment: emphasizing care ethics, highlighting the need for nurturing and sustainable connections with nature, as well as highlighting the need for intersectional approaches to environmental justice struggles.

Entangling Worlds – Approaches on Ecofeminism, Cohabitation and Queer Ecology invites and challenges us – as a group – to reinvent our understanding of nature in the light of queer and feminist theories. Based on exercises, as well as theoretic and artistic inputs this practice-based workshop will explore and attempt new ways of thinking about our relationship with nature and biology. Together we will speculate on queering of nature as a new form of relationality based on kinship and fluidity, instead of domination and destruction.

Anja Lückenkemper is an independent curator, researcher, and writer based in Berlin. Her practice focuses on an analysis of the present in its historical and global embedding, with a special interest in the construction of knowledge and knowl­edge production. 2016/17 she was artistic director at Kunstverein Göttingen. Anja has worked in non-institutional contexts, as well as for art institutions such as Kunstverein Munich, KW Institut for Contemporary Art, Berlin Biennial, daad Gallery Berlin and Kuns­thalle Osnabrück. Additionally, she is a is a doctoral researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts & University of Reading, looking at critical ecologies.

Image: Matthäus Merian the Elder “Nutrix ejus terra est”, 1618 (© Science History Institute) / Naomi Rincón Gallardo “Heavy Blood”, 2018 (© the artist).