&Now 2019 Conference

How do we survive and extend care to living and non-living entities within precarious conditions? Three panelists reimagine our networked existence in the Anthropocene.

Model organisms are “species chosen because they are amenable to laboratory research and suitable for the study of a range of biological problems.” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s three-volume manual Emerging Model Organisms introduces a “new generation of model organisms and provide[s] a diverse catalog of potential species useful for extending research in new directions.” Kanika Agrawal’s “(e)merging model organisms” adapts concepts, protocols, and language from the CSHL manual to explore the biological/ecological and ontological problems of being/acting human in a world shared with many other humans and organisms. Through experimentation and speculation in sound, image, and movement inspired by model organisms, Agrawal speculates other ways of living for present and future generations.

Bill Basquin’s “From Inside of Here” is a manuscript and film-in-progress that emerged from field research in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico. The project evinces multiple methodologies – writing, camping, sensory attunement, spatial composition, embodiment practices, and thinking of individual life as part of a community. Following the realization that there could be cameras anywhere—because of the hunters and various government surveys of wildlife populations—Basquin turns the camera on the self, in a “naked gesture” about the panopticon, transgendered embodiment, and human reliance on the visual.

Steve Tomasula will read from his novel, Ascension, a story told from the end of our version of Nature: a story of Nature as it was; and is; and might become. His panel "Ascension, Or, Nature as a Medium" attempts to re-imagine the book in terms of thing-theory, or new materialism, incorporating the materials from three eras—the time just before Darwin changes human nature; the digital revolution of the 1980s; and today—as part of its narrative. He explores the ways in which we continually remake the world in our own image and are in turn remade by the new nature we’ve created.