To enflesh and ensoul that complex, messy, fleeting thing that is living on this planet: More-than-Human paradigms and senses of purpose

Talk at CreaTures, Seville, 30 June 2022

ABSTRACT

How do we encounter climate breakdown? How do we negotiate the impossibly complex? If, as Amitav Ghosh suggests in The Nutmeg’s Curse, the greatest obstacle to facing planetary trouble is not a crisis of means, but one of imagination – then how do we, creative and cultural practitioners, whose lives are dedicated to the possibilities of the imagination – how do we participate in nurturing and encouraging a renewed sense of our purpose? This question is both delightfully conceptual and overwhelmingly practical. In this presentation, Pietroiusti will bring stories from her own curatorial practice, as well as some new thoughts and future intentions, to bear on this question. To help her do so, Pietroiusti will rely upon the intelligences of many different ecologies (environmental, psychic, organisational, social, human and more-than-human), in order to think through how these are inextricably tangled up with one another, and what directions they may point towards, for both creative and systemic practices.