Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  Just a mere Spring to take: Embedding in Capitalocenic Atmospheres (2019) author(s): Christoph Solstreif-Pirker published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
  30 years after the publication of Félix Guattari’s “The Three Ecologies,” we are facing a turning point in the way we are encountering our environment. Established concepts of “nature” have proved to be considerably part of a grand homocentric design whose spatiality Peter Sloterdijk poignantly defined as the “World Interior of Capital.” To investigate these capitalocenic strata, it becomes necessary to re-territorialize institutionalized debates, conceptions and practices, and perceive contemporary landscapes as manifold, unknown and peripheral alterities. This research exposition aims to encounter the capitalocenic field, its actors and inherent specificities, and to propose a peripheral methodology for its investigation. According to its etymological roots, periphery not only implies a field or site at “the outer surface”, but also refers to the Greek verb periphérō, meaning “to carry around.” This adds a proto-ethical component, as we become part of a carrying and compassionate interplay with virtual forces of capitalocenic dominance, violence, and destruction. In this intimate moment of becoming peripheral, we are striving from the grand institutional narrative towards the fragility of an uncertain world interior. To Félix Guattari, this is an act of empathy, of an affective affinity and imaginary re-construction that unfolds new practices, grounds, and epistemologies of how to encounter our manmade planet. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of peripheral discourse on the edge of the planetary crisis, and unfolds a vibrant and democratic borderspace within the all-encompassing ecological trauma. Departing from Victor Turner’s “social drama” and the unpredictability of a global monetary system, the research exposition focuses on the specific context of Iceland as a knot geographically located within the global fabric of the Capitalocene. Being the site of a massive banking crisis between 2008 and 2011, the island-state is seen as an artificial environment of capitalist warfare, based on an ecosystem of virtual forces that actualize themselves on a social, economic, cultural or ecological level. Applying a situated performative research praxis, the research exposition affirmatively investigates this manifold and monetary-driven spatiality. As the research exposition suggests, performative research allows to confront the unpredictability of the capitalocenic field in all its complexity and to pave the way for “vanquishing [...] or even befriending“ the dominant forms of global financial market capitalism” (Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sensation). “Just a mere Spring to take” is a discursive assemblage of various investigative highlights on a virtual, global and elusive phenomenon, aiming at peripherically unfolding horizons of performative thinking, and enabling a fragile intra-active confrontation with our vertiginous, traumatized but still living cosmos.
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  Breathing into the Ecological Trauma: The Case of Gruinard Island (2020) author(s): Christoph Solstreif-Pirker published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  With the performative investigation of Gruinard Island, Scotland, an exemplary non-site of anthropocenic extinction, this research exposition aims for alternative ways of encountering space in the midst of the present ecological crisis. The research exposition suggests an inclusive way of breathing, thinking, and living that merges “with experience, art, ethics, technology, mysticism, science, etc.” (François Laruelle: Principles of Non-Philosophy). Facing our own imminent extinction, ecological thought can no longer fall back on ideologies toward-death but has to investigate how the immediacy of our planetary all can be encountered in the fullness of its ambivalence. With this affirmative approach, a feminine, birthing approach unfolds, that makes the otherness of the environment an ally for forging practices of vibrant becoming, political responsibility, and mutual trust.
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