More-than-Planet Lab activities at Ars Electronica Festival

The More-than-Planet Lab is hosting workshops and showcasing documentation from the partners activities in the project and more. The open lab will also offer space for artists, designers, creative thinkers, environmental researchers and experts in space research to participate and think together.

The More-than-Planet Lab is located at the heart of the themed exhibition in the POSTCITY bunker.

Workshops

* Planetary Public Stack

Wednesday Sept 6th, 14:00 - 16:00

Led by Miha Turšič, Waag Futurelab (SI/NL)

This project builds on an earlier project, the Public Stack, which is based on the idea that all these technological layers should be developed from public values and takes a critical look at our use of technology. It builds from conceptual foundations of the comparative planetary imaginaries (matterings, concepts, cosmologies) toward required capacities (technologies, tools, data, skills) and the development of concrete new cases of public imaginaries. The participants will work on the technologies and skills to develop collaborative and art-driven innovation approaches with critical and creative tools for addressing today’s environmental troubles. 

* Systemic Change in the Times of Polycrisis

Thursday Sept 7th, 14:00 - 15:30

Led by Antti Tenetz (FI), Tero Toivanen (FI)

The workshop "Systemic Change in Times of Polycrisis" explores how we can broaden our horizons and find sustainable solutions to the polycrisis caused by ecological emergency. It focuses on radical change in industrial societies. The perspectives of polycrisis will be linked to local examples that will be explored through the work of artists, researchers and activists. The discussion shifts from the global to the national/regional and back to the planetary level and is linked to selected art projects in the exhibition and to More than Planet art and science activities in Pyhäsalmi, the deepest metal mine in Europe and the Oulanka Research Station located in the middle of the Northern Boreal Forest, the world's largest terrestrial biome.

* Planetary mattering

Saturday Sept 9th, 14:00 - 15:30

Led by Miha Turšič, Waag Futurelab (SI/NL)

It matters which planet we portray, and which one we do not. In this workshop, participants will learn about ways of mattering. With this term, we refer to the images, interests and facts that shape our image of the planet, and, in turn, how the solidification of these imaginaries determines the way we talk about the Earth and the decisions we make. Mattering looks at both the matter itself and its significance. In short, we research the drivers behind how we see our environment.

Expert tours

These tours guide you along a selection of artworks from the thematic exhibition (Co)Owning More-than-Truth. Expert tours need to be booked in advance.

* Mattering by Miha Turšič (SI)

Wednesday Sept 6th, 10:30 - 11:15

Meeting Point: POSTCITY, More-than-Planet Lab

‘Matter’ can be understood as both a noun and a verb: it is about material and about caring. Mattering is the inseparable interplay between creating facts and values, and the cultural and societal structures that emerge from this dynamic relationship. The way in which we imagine our planet influences our direct environment and therefore matters greatly. What matters to us depends on a multiplicity of different things: locality, ethics, morals, values. Understanding the diversity of drivers behind environmental concepts will contribute to better accessibility of environmental knowledge. This tour will guide you through a varied selection of different artworks that will reflect on matters-of-fact, matters-of-concern, matters-of-care, and matters-of-hope.

* Terraforming Earth - Decolonizing Space by Annick Bureaud (FR)

Thursday Sept 7th, 13:00 - 13:45

Meeting Point: POSTCITY, More-than-Planet Lab

Terraformation is used to describe the process by which we would like to transform other planets to make them habitable for us. Colonisation has become the synonym to appropriation and exploitation. We'll consider those two notions to discuss how they could be useful in looking back at Earth and our endeavours in Space today through a selection of three artworks from the exhibition.

* Mikro Makro, from Observation to Orientation by Marko Peljhan and Uros Veber (SI)

Saturday Sept 9th, 11:00 - 11:45

Meeting Point: POSTCITY, More-than-Planet Lab

MIKRO-MAKRO, from observation to orientation, led by Marko Peljhan (SI) and Uroš Veber (SI) will be focused on the works that could be understood as systems observatories and will attempt to synthesize certain common topical vectors present in all of them.

Biographies

Miha Turšič (SI/NL)

Miha Turšič is project developer for the Open Wetlab at Waag. He works on international collaboration and initiating projects that touch on the themes of art-science, biotechnology, digital fabrication, open-source hardware, ecology, space culture and material research. He is closely involved with the planet B narrative and is the founder of Open Space Lab within Waag.

Antti Tenetz (FI)

Antti Tenetz is a visual artist. Currently leading the More-than-Planet creative-EU project at PhotoNorth Finland. His art works are situated at the interface between media arts, biological arts and urban art. Focus of his practice is on multi-disciplinary and multi-artistic cooperation between art and science, and he often uses technologies such as drones, satellite tracking, game engines and machine learning. Tenetz’s works and cooperation projects have been exhibited in Finland and internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta 12, Istanbul Biennale parallel program, Tate Modern Exchange program, Science Gallery Dublin and Lumipalloefekti exhibitions, X-Border, ISEA Istanbul, Pan-Barentz and e-mobil art. He has also won national snow-sculpting competitions.

Tero Toivanen (FI)

Tero Toivanen, PhD, is a university researcher and core fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. His research interests concern the intertwined processes of capital, labor and ecology in concrete world-historical settings. He has worked on the environmental history of Finnish capitalism, the political economy of Finnish forestry and the governance of low-carbon economic and industrial transformation. His current research project (2021–2024) studies far-right attitudes towards nature, ecology and climate change. Toivanen is a co-founder of the multidisciplinary BIOS Research Unit (established in 2015), which synthesizes scientific knowledge on global environmental and resource pressures and examines their impact on the political economy of Finnish and European societies.

Annick Bureaud (FR)

Annick Bureaud is an independent art critic, curator and event organiser in art and technosciences. She is the director of Leonardo/Olats (www.olats.org), European sister organisation to Leonardo/Isast (www.leonardo.info).She wrote numerous articles and contribute to the French contemporary art magazine Art Press. She is the co-editor of the collection of essays Connexions : art, réseaux, media (Ensba Press, 2002) and the author of Les Basiques : l’art « multimédia », introductory book to new media art (Leonardo/Olats, 2004).She organised many symposia, conferences and workshops among which Artmedia VIII: From Aesthetics of Communication to Net Art, Paris, 2002 and Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero Gravity: The Experience of Parabolic Flight, projet in collaboration between Leonardo/Olats and the International Festival @rt Outsiders, Paris, 2003 ; BIO ART – BIO DESIGN, enjeux culturels et sociétaux de la biologie de synthèse, 6 mars 2014, in the framework of the EU Leonardo/Olats StudioLab project, in collaboration with Décalab ; Leonardo/Olats LASER Paris meetings in collaboration with La Diagonale Paris-Saclay.