SKIN FLICK Image courtesy of Adham Faramawy, video, 13 minutes 30 seconds, 2019

Co-lead with writer, artist and producer Jack Young (WEVAA Curatorial fellow, 2022) at the invitation of Spike Island Bristol. 

What does it mean to desire beyond the “human”? How might ideas of decomposition and soil regeneration expand our notions of reproduction and remediation beyond the logics of the human? Where do we draw the line between a symbiotic relationship and a parasitic one? How can we use speculative visual and textual practices to respond to the Earth’s current distressing conditions? These are some of the questions posed in the second public reading group of the Body-Forest programme.

A dynamic, hybrid session including films, small group conversations and live readings from artists and writers including Adham Faramawy, Paul Samuel White, Octavia Butler and Jenny Hval. These works wiere brought into an open conversation with the work of feminist thinker Maria Puig de la Bellacasa most recent work on ecological breakdown. Bellacasa explores how an intersectional embrace of breakdown and decay can lead to regenerative, eco-socially situated acts of care amidst contagion, exploitation and toxicity. We traversed through multispecies entanglements of contagion, aging and decay, monstrosity and speculative fictions of polymorphous desire.