Vegetal Mediations: Plant Agency in Contemporary Art and Environmental Humanities

PROGRAMME

Keynote speaker: Michael Marder
Author of Plant Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life

Friday 5 May

15.00 Introduction: Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Translocal Institute)

15.15 Panel 1
Monika Bakke (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan)
The Geologic Life of Plants
Åsa Sonjasdotter (artist, Berlin)
A Muddy Place for Art
Špela Petrič (artist, Ljubljana)
Vegetal Otherness, Intimately

16.30 Coffee Break

16.50 Panel 2
Alan Watt (Central European University)
Dangerous roots: exploring autochthony’s problematic environmental appeal
Ágnes Bakk, Bence György Pálinkás (artists, Budapest)
Invasive Alien?
Christine Mackey (artist, Ireland)
Seed Matter

18.05 Film Screening
The Crown Against Mafavuke & Muthi, by Uriel Orlow (2016 SA/UK)

18.35 Wine reception

Saturday 6 May

9.30 Panel 3
Khadija von Zinnenberg Carroll (University of Birmingham)
Botanical Drift: Economic Botany and its plant protagonists
Adéla Kremplová (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Nature Lost in Translation: Nature Construction in Leisure Venues
Chonja Lee (University of Bern)
Ballets botaniques: How early film makes the plant soul visible in France
Uriel Orlow (artist, London)
Theatrum Botanicum

11.20 Coffee break

11.40 Panel 4
Isabel Hoving (Leiden University)
The Queerness of Nature in Caribbean Writing: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Desire Through Plants
Christiane Erharter (curator, Vienna)
Wilderness creates Diversity: Discussing the plants of Kaucyila Brooke (USA) and Lois Weinberger (A)
Patrícia Vieira (Georgetown University, USA)
Phytographia: Writing with Plants

13.00 Lunch break

13.45 Book Salon
Presentation of a selection of recent publications by conference speakers. Organised by Erik Hansen (Central European University)

14.15 Panel 5
Stefan Voicu (Central European University)
Fungal (Dis)Connections. Ergot, Wheat and Global Commodity Trade
Lea Vene (curator, Zagreb) and Sendy Osmičević (environmental scientist, Zagreb)
Seed for the Future
Tatiana Safonova (Central European University)
Annuals as Perfect Commodities: Plants and People in a Small Flower Nursery in Hungary
Bo Zheng (artist, Hong Kong)
Weed Party: Plants and Politics in China

16.00 CEU Roof Garden Tour lead by:
Elizabeth Loudon (Central European University)

16.30 Keynote lecture:
Michael Marder (Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and Professor-at-Large at the Humanities Institute of Diego Portales University, Chile)
Let’s not hurry to leave the middle: Lingering with plants

17.20 Roundtable discussion

17.50 Finish

For abstracts and biographies see:
http://www.translocal.org/vegetalmediations/index.html