The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: we have never been one

1 December 2018, Ambika P3, London
With Filipa Ramos, Kostas Stasinopoulos, Giles Round

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The second instalment of this year-long symposium and research project, presented as part of the General Ecology project, features anthropologists, artists, robotics experts, historians and scientists, to address interior multitude, swarming organisms, symbiosis and entanglement.

Participants include artist and educator Heather Barnett, site-specific practitioners Gruff Theatre, swarm robotics engineer Sabine Hauert, science historian and writer Daisy Hildyard, neuroscientist Leah Kelly, science sociologist Hannah Landecker, anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, anthropologist Germain Meulemans, biological systems scientist and network architect Phoebe Tickell and artist Anaïs Tondeur plus film and sound works by artists Sophia Al-Maria and Jenna Sutela and composer Annea Lockwood. Part 2: We have never been one is presented in collaboration with the London Contemporary Music Festival and the University of Westminster.

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. In our own bodies, we are outnumbered 9-to-1 by non-human cells. If we as humans need these organisms to function, what exactly do we mean when we think of ourselves as 'an individual'?

Listen to this episode from Serpentine Podcast on Spotify. What new ecological insights can be gained from thinking of the planet as an organism in itself? As humans, we have a need to simplify our surroundings to understand them. How can we communicate the complexity of the world in a way we understand, without losing its meaning?