DE\GLOBALIZE (2018-22)

Agential cuts through Critical Zones in Science and other Sediments – Kabini, Nile and Rhine


Living beings and things viewed by the lens of wild topologies. An artistic research about how to de-globalize the global focusing on the near surface environment in India, Egypt and Germany.

»The global evokes the notion of a totality as a whole, in an indistinct integrality. While mondialisation would rather evoke an expanding process throughout the expanse of the world of human beings, cultures and nations. Mondialisation gives a different indication than of an enclosure in the undifferentiated sphere of a unitotatality.«
Jean Luc Nancy, Note on the Untranslatable Mondialisation (2004)

DE\GLOBALIZE is a search movement for the TERRESTRIAL – using the transdisziplinary concept of the Critical Zone (CZ) – the skin layer around the earth in which complex interactions involving soil, water, air, plants and living organisms regulate the natural habitat. In this zone highly complex transformational processes the conditions for all terrestrial life.

Through the CZ the earth displays its agency relevant to humans. The media ecological approach DE\GLOBALIZE is an ethnographic stroll about climate change, conceptualized by Daniel Fetzner and Martin Dornberg in the context of a two year seminar with Bruno Latour at the Center for Arts and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe.

The artistic research is re-negotiating the grammar of space, borders, scale and raises questions of visibility and display in order to DE/GLOBALIZE the notion of "the global". It is thereby focussing on three key questions:

  1. How to think, medialize, fold and answer* the earth in a de-globalized topology?
  2. How to think meshworks, alterities, entanglements and relational references in the parasitocene?
  3. How to narrate critical zonings in transmedial, improvisational, ptolemaic, cuts?

DE\GLOBALIZE started in India in 2018 and will be continued with further agential cuts through critical zones in Egypt 2019 and the Upper Rhine valley in 2020. It can be considered as a search movement for the terrestrial (Latour 2018). The research is thereby focusing on anthropogenic transformations, social insects, animal-human relationships, affective intervals, 360° stereographic projections, complexity, non-linear improvisations, matters of concern/matters of care, soil and parasitology. In our research we assume no big system but thousand plateaus of little neighbourhoods.

The results are ongoing documented at deglobalize.com as a transmedial meshwork. The research is a collaboration among Offenburg University, Freiburg University, the Indian Institute of Science, Srishti Institute for Art Design and Technology Bangalore, the German University in Cairo and INSA Strasbourg.

1. CRITICAL SCIENCING ZONE, IISc Bangalore (2018)

»Termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, like as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.«
Manny Farber, White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art (1962)

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore is a cutting-edge research spot in science, engineering and the Indian space industry, initiated in 1909 by the steel magnate Jamsetji Tata. The IISc is hosting a main Critical Zone Observatory in Asia.

The neigbourhood of an Open Circuit Wind Tunnel and the Centre for Ecological Sciences is generating a critical sciencing zone . Overgrown by a small rain forest this intersection turns out to be an ideal site to set up a Earth Lab – a spot, where we invite a mixed bunch of experts in the field of the critical zone to act and reflect upon their research during the monsoon.

1. PHASE I: Parasitic Workshop and Interviews March 2018 at CCS/IIScIn March 2018 interviews with biologists and experts in the field of the critical zone together with a participatory workshop set the first cut.

2. CRITICAL EARTH LAB: The second cut is located in between the CCS and the neighbouring Open-Circuit Wind Tunnel, designed 1959 by the German architect Otto Königsburger.

TEAM INDIA

Fetzner/Dornberg Artistic Research
Ephraim Wegner Sound and Programing
Adrian Schwartz and Josua Krüger, Film Students Offenburg University
Dr. Vasanthi Mariadass Film Studies, Critical Theory, and Contemporary Art, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology
Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar Biologist, Centre for Ecological Sciences
Dr. Souvik Mandal Biologist. CES at IISc
Dr. Anindita Brahma Biologist. CES at IISc
Ponanna Biologist. CES at IISc
Prof. Sekhar Muddu Environmental Engineer. Head of the Kabini Critical Zone Observatory
Dr. Pascal Jouquet Soil Ecologist. IFCWS, Indo-French Cell at IISc
Dr. Laurent Ruiz Hydrologist. IFCWS, Indo-French Cell at IISc


  • Critical Sciencing Zone: THE EARTH BELOW OUR FEET
  • Critical Sciencing Zone: IMAGES
  • Fragments: RHIZOME

    Texts by Dr. Vasanthi Mariadass, a lead researcher from the Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology. She is a Teaching faculty, Researcher, and Dean for the School of New Humanities and Design at Srishti Institute for Art Design and Technology. Her background is in Film Studies, Critical Theory, and Contemporary Art. She engages with experimental cinema, visual essay, docu-fiction, and weaves her analysis through postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, environmental and philosophical topics.

2. NILE DELTA (2019)

WATER LAB   The Nile is a main central water ressource for 10 African nations. The Nile region has a population growth of 3% a year - more than anywhere else on earth. Our Critical Water Lab is focusing on the dispensation of water as a critical matter in the megacity Cairo. On a Nile island different actants are assembling to renegotiate their needs.

Field Study in cooperation with the architectural department of the German University in Cairo (GUC).

3. UPPER RHINE (2019-22)

INDUSTRIAL LAB   The Upper Rhine Valley is heavily affected by the climate change. We cooperate with local enterprises by focussing on the resilience of industrial production processes, employees and their enviroment.

We understand diffraction patterns, “as patterns of difference that make a difference to be the fundamental constituents that make up the world” (Barad, 2007, p.72). Reflection/diffraction tries to realize more difference-attentive modes of behaviour, thought, life(s), matter(s) and alterity. They approach differences as making a difference in terms of both genealogy and figurative conceptualization, of matter coming to matter and of life coming to life. This comprises permanent crossmedial and crosssectoral trans-lations/trans-missions between multiple ecologies, between theory and practice and between matters of fact, matters of concern and matters of care.



IDEA/CONCEPT

Daniel Fetzner (*1966), Media Artist and Media Scientist. Professor for Design and Artistic Research at Hochschule Offenburg, Lecturer at Freiburg University and Head of the Media Ecology Lab. Research interest in translocal relations, site specific interventions, media ethnographic explorations and new materialism.

Martin Dornberg, MD, PhD (*1959) is a philosopher and researcher/medical practitioner in the field of psychosomatics and psychotherapy, since 1989 Lecturer at the Philosophy Department and the Centre of Anthropology and Gender Studies (ZAG) at Freiburg University. Martin´s contribution to the project is a philosophical and anthropological, ethnographic and transmedial, also transdisciplinary reflection and “diffraction” of the project and its multilayered actants (themes, subjects, objects, methods, concepts, processes, matters).

Fetzner/Dornberg/Wegner are practicing artistic research projects which entangle anthropological, philosophical and medial perspectives. These theoretical and practical enfoldings result in experimental systems and their performative reflection, in order to produce new aesthetic constellations and transitional zones of thinking. With BUZZ (2014/15) Fetzner/Dornberg and Wegner dealt with the dichotonomy of human/animal, with the project WASTELAND (2016/18 ) they question the binarity of human/matter in relationship with waste.

SOUND/PROGRAMMING

Ephraim Wegner (*1980) obtained his master degree in audiovisual media at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) in 2013. Since 2014 he is working as research assistant with Daniel Fetzner at the Media Ecology Lab at Hochschule Offenburg. Wegner has a keen interest in the sonification of complex systems and is using various computer languages (like Csound, Pure Data and Processing) to combine different forms of digital audio synthesis and generative art focusing on multidisciplinary approaches and concepts. He is scholarship holder from Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg. Ephraim will focus on reconstructing particular sounds by an closer view on the underlaying physical model. Synthesis methods, mainly based on simple arithmetics, allow us to sonify the basic material. By this approach we can explore if the artificial models serve for different lifeforms (animals, humans and aliens) to react on and in which way. Furthermore it can be seen as an artistic work that ranges from analyzation, reconstruction, replacement of the "natural" sound source in any environment to an improvised musical work presented in the experimental framework of the project.

INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTATION

The interactive documentation of DE\GLOBALIZE is part of the BMBF-research project Gendering MINT
Stefan Salm and Zaid Ghasib, Offenburg University
Marion Mangelsdorf and Simon Schwab, Freiburg University



INSIDE – A lecture-performance by Bruno Latour about the Critical Zone and "La Region centrale" (Michael Snow, 1971)



A cooperation between the artistic research group mbody, Offenburg University, Freiburg University and the Indian Institute of Science IISc, Bangalore.

Kindly supported by

© Fetzner/Dornberg 2018