Worlds of possibilities

Guests: Sara Cattin (for Isterika Istorika), Mary Maggic, Alessandro Perini, Riikka Tauriainen, Müge Yilmaz 

Conceived by: Caterina Giansiracusa, Petra Köhle, Nicolas Vermont-Petit-Outhenin

Within the framework of the symposium, we will question together with students and guests the concept of utopia and dystopia, as narrative genres capable of shaping new imaginaries but also of critically reading the present. We will work and experiment around  the notions of Hybridization, Hacking, Contamination, Body Extension, Rituals, Storytelling and Speculations.

The symposium is structured in five workshop groups of 15-25 students each. Facilitated by one of the guests and their specific artistic/curatorial/theoretical practice, the workshops provide space to develop these questions further and deliberate possible courses of action.

Villa Mirage  is a cultural center run by the members of Avocat Studio and located in the industrial area of Martigny. Its headquarters is situated inside an old aluminium factory, place that straddles the past and present and offers a multi-layered environment for workshops. A communal lunch allows for exchange between groups.

The symposium provides lunch for everybody (Soup and humus). The symposium will take place partly outside, so please bring warm and confortable clothes, raincoat, and some water and snacks.

The Symposium will take place at Villa Mirage, rue des Vorzieres 18, 1920 Martigny

PROGRAMM
Meeting point: Martigny, rue des Vorzieres 18

10h00 – 10h30 Welcome and distribution in the workshops
10h30 – 13h00 Workshop
13h00 – 14h30 Common lunch (Soup and Hummus)
14h30 – 16h30 Workshop
16h30 – 17h00 Getting together and farewell

WORKSHOPS

Utopian stories for dystopian realities (and vice versa). 

ISTERIKA ISTORIKA

The world of science fiction offers a key to understanding reality especially when our lived experience, and perceived knowledge of what life is at large, goes terribly very close–in literal or in metaphorical ways–to stories that we would say are coming from another planet. In particular, dystopian literature has the feature to crush futuristic and distorted realities right on contemporary Earth and, perhaps, start constructing conversations about how dystopic our reality is already. On the other hand, science fiction has the power to bring new colors, sounds, and voices to realities that seem without futures. It’s a practice of imagining utopias and, perhaps, to find the possibility within what’s–apparently–(im)possible.

But whose utopia are we thinking about? Can the utopia of some be the dystopia of others? What's the real goal of speculation? And where are the ultimate limits of utopian imagination? 

These and more questions are the special focal points that Isterika Istorika’s reading lab will work through starting from different short stories and novels. The workshop will articulate in between collective and individual reading, and discussion.

/// Isterika Istorika was founded in 2020 as a reading group–first online–and now identifies itself as a physical platform for sharing, storytelling, and reading aloud that is based on feminist practices of collective thinking and horizontal exchange. Isterika meets its local community every month at the transfeminist bookstore Nora Book & Coffee in Turon (Italy), and it’s organized by the art workers Caterina Giansiracusa and Sara Cattin, Nora’s librarian Denise Cappadonia, the translator Marti del Romano.

Through the years Isterika has collaborated with several entities including BACO (Bergamo), Spazio Hydro (Biella), Cripta 747 (Turin), Salone del Libro di Torino 2023, Lavanderia a Vapore (Turin).

/// Sara Cattin lives in Turin (IT) and is a multidisciplinary art worker in the field of contemporary art with visual, participatory and performative projects in rural geographical contexts. She trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and developed an independent approach to critical studies at the Dutch Art Institute - Roaming Academy (NL). Among her experiences in the curatorial and management field, since 2023 she has been in charge of curating, coordinating, tutoring and territorial mediation for the residencies in Performing Arts of CROSS Project (Lago d'Orta), while since long she has also been collaborating with the residency programs of Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto and Accademia UNIDEE (Biella).

Alien knowledging

Mary Maggic

As a collective, we will explore the alienation that resides in our bodies and enviroments, and how we can build from its disobedience. With various exercises such as scavenging, blind-sensing, and scenography-building, we will transform old paradigms of toxicity and normativity into new modes of thinking and being. The alien becomes the raw material from which we build our futures, with a radical breakage from the past. From the pulsating words of scholar Anna Tsing, “purity is not an option!”

///Mary Maggic (b. 1991, Los Angeles) is an artist and researcher working within the fuzzy intersections of body politics and capitalist ecological alienations. Based in Vienna since 2017, Maggic frequently uses biohacking as a xeno-feminist practice of care that serves to demystify invisible lines of molecular biopower. After completing their Masters at MIT Media Lab (Design Fiction) in 2017, their project “Open Source Estrogen” was awarded Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in Hybrid Arts, and in 2019 they completed a 10-month Fulbright residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia on the relationship between Javanese mysticism and the plastic pollution crisis. Maggic is a recipient of the 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, and they are a current member of the online network Hackteria: Open Source Biological Art and the Asian feminist collective Mai Ling.

Narrative and Non-Narrative SoundscapesAn Exploratory Workshop

Alessandro Perini

Narrative and Non-Narrative Soundscapes is a workshop designed to reflect on sound as a storytelling medium, inviting the participants to play with its potential in different kinds of embedded/embodied auditory experiences.

The method is to use mobile devices for sound production, varying in size, each with its own unique sound profile, to set up an aural experience which can suggest a (non-)narrative. Participants might employ differently sized speakers, from studio monitors or P.A. for larger locations to tiny buzzers to deploy hidden sounds which require a certain effort to be heard.

///Alessandro Perini studied Composition (with Luca Francesconi and Ivan Fedele among others), Electronic Music and Science of Musical Communication in Italy and Sweden. His artistic production ranges from instrumental and electronic music to audiovisual and light-based works, net-art, land-art and vibration-based works, recently focusing on custom-built machines. He has taken part in festivals and has participated in multiple artistic residencies.

He has taught audiovisual production for the arts at the Conservatory of Como (Italy) and electronic music at the Malmö Academy of Music, as well as in workshops in Italy, Switzerland, Lithuania and South America. He is currently teaching Composition at the Conservatory of Pesaro (Italy). He’s a founding member of Hertzbreakerz, a group curating - among other events - Sound Spaces Festival in Malmö (Sweden), and member of Ars Nova Ensemble, a formation devoted to the performance of newly written music

Politics of matter

Riikka Tauriainen

This workshop will provide a brief introduction to New Materialism and related ontological concepts. It will also introduce practices and techniques of the making of sculptural works and the politics within materials. It will reflect on materials, how they are chosen, and the histories they bring with them. Participants with different disciplinary backgrounds and knowledge are invited to think together and develop an intention, attitude and way of working with subjects, objects and materials in a collaborative environment. The goal of this session is to create an awareness of how we use materials and to question the relationship we want to cultivate with our environment.

///Riikka Tauriainen (she/they) is a visual artist and lecturer engaging in ecology, postcolonial theories and gender issues through installations, videos and sculpture. She navigates on the boundaries between art and science, between fact and fiction. She explores water phenomena and the extent to which our kinship to other bodies can be understood as a deeply materialistic relationality. Riikka Tauriainen grew up in Finland and lives in Zurich. She studied in Tallinn, Essen, and Berlin and obtained her MA degree in Fine Arts from the Zurich University of the Arts. She is a doctoral researcher in the SNSF research project «EcoArtLab» at the Institute Practices and Theories in the Arts at the Bern University of the Arts.

Becoming seeds

Müge Yilmaz

In this workshop we will combine ecology and science fiction with an intention to speculate about the future of earth. We will look into short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin & Octavia Butler while underlining the companion planting systems for self-sustenance as a parallel method for coexistence. I will share two-short stories accompanied by these co-planting techniques and social movements that adopt such plants as metaphors for collectivity, solidarity and change. Finally we will put together a collective performance that embodies each element in these systems with its own existence but also in interaction with others.

///Born in Istanbul, Müge Yılmaz lives and works in Amsterdam. Her research presents speculations influenced by feminist science fiction and proposes narratives about the future through installation, performance and photography. Recent exhibitions include The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennial, 2022, The Seventh Continent, 16th Istanbul Biennial, 2019; Why Not Ask Again? 11th Shanghai Biennale, 2016; Tenminste Houdbaar Tot, Museum Arnhem, 2022; Posterity Hill (solo) at Wilfried Lentz, 2022. She has been a resident artist at ACC and is alumna of Rijksakademie van Beelden de Kunsten. She is co-founder of the art collective Four Siblings and is the admin of @feministcifi.