NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract
We dominate and appropriate [nature]... Our fundamental relationship with objects comes down to war and property.
Michel Serres, 1995, The Natural Contract
Trees, forests, rivers, mountains, seas, stardust, DNA — imagine the environment not as the backdrop of our activities, imagine objects of nature not as items to be appropriated or exploited, but as subjects with intrinsic value and full juridical rights. Cancel the tired subject-object dichotomy between person and environment, the obsolete opposition nature and culture that does not hold in view of modern scientific discoveries; do away with conditions of mastery, appropriation, and submission; reimagine human concerns as unreservedly dependent on the natural world, integrated within nature. Only such a shift in our conceptualisation of nature can change our deep relation to the matter, species, ecosystems around us. A real Green Deal requires a systemic change of ground.
Pushing beyond Rousseau’s social contract, "NaturArchy: towards a Natural Contract", calls for a more inclusive and equitable contract with our environment. Establishing a different relation with nature is a prime condition to acquire the necessary attitudes and skills to combat global warming. To limit our tremendous environmental impact. To free nature from the onslaught of human development – do we need to rearticulate her immanent sovereignty and decolonise her into sustainability again?
Simply ensure legally enforceable rights to natural entities: and suddenly any decision as to what is the right or wrong action concerning the environment no longer hinges on human concerns. Trees, planets, clouds and roots: we want to explore how the material world matters, develop ways to understand the languages of nature and their legitimacy. Moulds, yeasts, grains, herbs: we also want to deepen our collective awareness on the tremendous legacy of humans in their intercourse with nature.
NaturArchy aims to explore – through artistic, scientific and legal expressions – how providing Nature and its phenomena with a contract that integrates her totally into our society can redefine our anthropocentric relationship with Nature. Intersecting science and law, reason and style, art and judgment, policy and imagination, NaturArchy wants to re-imagine the western relation of human and non-human, in an attempt to ensure juridical persona to Nature’s many wonders, be they stardust or DNA.
Responses to the Curatorial Statement
Works developed in response to and in dialogue with the curatorial concept on NaturArchy
Crown Quartet
Croatia: Zahra Mani - double bass, bass & electric guitars, field recordings, live electronics
Italy: Roberto Paci Dalò - clarinet, bass clarinet, voice, live electronics
Hungary: Tibor Szemző - voice, bass flute, flute
Austria: Mia Zabelka - electric violin, vocals, live electronics
Station Manager and sound engineer: Alessandro Renzi
We are pleased to announce the new sound art project A Natural Contract by the Crown Quartet. The project is supported by the festival Resonances IV - NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract.
To know the world is to breathe, to breathe is to savour the world. An interspecies dialogue where you find yourself human, vegetable, animal and mineral, in the name of fusion. A world composed not of objects but of streams that penetrate us and that we penetrate, of waves of varying intensity and in perpetual movement. We can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Towards a “multispecies storytelling” (Donna Haraway).
A Natural Contract is created for Resonances IV and it crosses borders through the simultaneity of music and language in a musical exchange between four different European countries. The four countries in the Alps-Adriatic-Region have been barely accessible due to the Corona pandemic. The idea of this live sound art concert at a distance is to invoke notions of memory, a discourse, a call to the most basic elements of humanity and society.
A Natural Contract is a new project for the Crown Quartet, conceived and directed by Usmaradio.
In addition to the rich instrumentation of the quartet, A Natural Contract has a textual layer embedded in the compositional structure (which leaves room for spontaneous improvised exchange). As with field recordings in music, the linguistic elements are subjected to selection, processing, reproduction and abstraction of text fragments that acquire new significances in connection with the sounds and the music.
The multilingualism of the text fragments reflects the diversity of the musical languages and approaches of the four musicians. Hungarian, Italian, various German accents, English and Croatian meet the abstract vocal sound art of Zabelka and Szemző. Thus vocal modes of expression are explored and contrasted in their diversity. There is a musical transformation of semantics, reflecting the absurdity that arises when you repeat a word for a long time, highlighting the transitions between language and sound, from noise to music. These processes in turn reflect the shifting meanings of terms such as borders and freedom in the Corona-shaped cultural-political landscape.
All four ensemble members have been working in the field of radio art for many years and have participated in diverse live stream project formats. So far, due to the technical challenges and complexity, these projects have always been implemented in cooperation with public institutions.
The radio as an artistic stage or platform is a unique performance and communication space. It is always a special moment to play live on the radio and to come into intimate contact with listeners in their own four walls. In times of physical distancing, the radio in connection with the internet offers a new enhanced platform for communicative exchange.
A Natural Contract is about overcoming borders through music and language.
A Natural Contract overcomes boundaries that have closed at an astonishing speed due to Covid-19. The long-term social, economic, socio-political implications of the events of the last few months are not yet foreseeable - just as little as we know how the virus and its mutations will affect our futures. In this respect, A Natural Contract is also a memory, a discourse, a reflexion of the most fundamental elements of humanity and society.
The four artists will be connected via internet stream from their studios in Austria, Hungary, Italy and Croatia in an acoustic exchange consisting of music, language and sound. The piece revolves around questioning acoustic materials, their manipulation, meaning, application and aesthetics.
Usmaradio at the Resonances IV SciArt Summer School
Taming the Forest
Students: Tijana Mijušković (BA student), Abiral Khadka (MA student), Nikita Meden (PhD candidat)
Mentors: Kristina Pranjić, pETER Purg
University of Nova Gorica, School of Arts & School of Humanities
Art-science experiments or other multidisciplinary collaborations have never been a simple process, which is also a result of disciplinary boundaries problematically manifested across education, and even in fairly inefficient innovation ecosystems. The aim of this collaborative project is to give attention to real differences of thinking and approach in art (new media, animation, music) and science (cultural history, critical theory, philosophy), and eventually manifest this in (collectively) experienced physical situations. We try to remain sensitive for the contrasting yet complementary positions that art and science are taking in our collaborative work. The goal is to integrate both quite radically, surpassing the usual dominance of science, for which art is useful (only) when it illustrates already established scientific theories, or simply represents beauty, reduced to a tool for illustration of scientific findings.
Post-growth, degrowth and other relevant concepts that may provide viable alternatives for our progress-driven society, are not experiential (enough). Even more, these concepts are currently discussed predominantly in the context of the economy and sustainable production, and not in the field of arts and humanities, which would be crucial for discussing the post-growth-based values, their contents and contexts to be promoted and experienced in our everyday life. Blending artistic and scientific approaches can provide a complexity that is needed to tackle the paradox – this is to be understood as the key departure point of the present collaboration.
Rewire Art:Science
Demistify Nature
Resettle Forest
Historic perspectives on forest management reaching two centuries back show how extracting natural resources – be it for direct energy, construction or food – and excessive use of the forest were in the past linked to a variety of interdependent factors, which differed in space and time.
Combining artistic and scientific methods this project provides interpretations of maps and archival correspondence in a wider historical context of 19th-century Komen community (Slovenia), which was part of the process of afforestation of the Karst that took place in the territory today belonging to Slovenia and Italy. Reflecting on the transformation of this land through history we shift the focus to this forest today, creating auditory and visual experience of the forest by including current maps and photographs, illustrations of local birds and their sound.
Watch the exclusive ArtSci production on NatuArchy, resulting from this collaboration, on Vimeo.