Artist Animal by Steve Baker, University of Minnesota Press:

Artist Animal examines the work of contemporary artists who directly confront questions of animal life, treating animals not aesthetically or symbolically but rather as beings who actively share the world with humanity. Featuring full-color examples of their art, it situates artists within the wider project of thinking beyond the human, asserting art’s power to open new ways of thinking about animals.

Animals have always been compelling subjects for artists, but the rise of animal advocacy and posthumanist thought has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between artist and animal. Continue reading

[Indeterminate Hikes + (2012) Android App & Performance. Whitney Museum of American Art ISP Exhibition, The Kitchen, NYC] Interview with Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint of Ecoarttech by Sophia Kosmaoglou, Furtherfield.org:

Refusing to regard technology merely as a tool, Ecoarttech expand the uses of mobile technology and digital networks revealing them to be fundamental components of the way we experience our environment. Their most recent work Indeterminate Hikes + (IH +) is a phone app that maps a series of trails through the city. IH + can be accessed globally, or wherever users have access to Google Maps on their mobile phones. After identifying the users’ location, IH + generates a route along random “Scenic Vistas” within urban spaces. Users are directed to perform a series of tasks along the trail and provide feedback in the form of snapshots generating an ongoing, open-ended dialogue. Continue reading

You are invited to apply for a place in the 2012 Session of the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa). The 2012 Session, Futures of Nature, is part of a drive within the humanities to reframe the disciplines and critical theory in light of the environmental emergency that is said to endanger most species on the planet, including our own.

We will reflect on some of the major challenges relating to the contemporary conditions and the long-term sustainability of life on Earth. Ours is an age characterized by the indelible imprint of human activity on the Earth’s climate, its geology and its conditions – a process which may lead to the planet’s becoming inhospitable to human life. It is also an era that blurs the distinction between human history and culture and the Earth’s natural history and material composition. Continue reading

Symposium: Rethinking Robert Smithson :: March 30, 2012; 10:00 am - 5:00 pm :: Royal Academy of Art (KABK), Prinsessegracht 4, The Hague, Netherlands.

On the occasion of the new publication Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement, Alauda Publications proudly presents the symposium Rethinking Robert Smithson about the legacy of the artist Robert Smithson (1938–1973) and its relevance for contemporary artistic practices. Along the line of two thematic approaches related to Smithson’s practice, Art and Ecology and The Cinematic Condition, topical concerns in artistic practice are reconsidered by internationally renowned theorists and artists.

In many ways, the artistic debates prevalent in the 1970s are recurring in our time: the relation between art and ecology, the position of the artist within a information and media society and the crisis of (neo)liberalism. Continue reading

[Details of dark version (Mushroom's mycelium) left, light version (Spider web) right.] Light and Dark Networks by Ursula Endlicher, commissioned by the Whitney Museum for whitney.org: Continue reading

Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles, edited by Jane Marsching and Andrea Polli:

Human understanding of the rapidly changing environments of the North and South Poles — and the realities of climate change — has been radically transformed by a host of innovations afforded by the digital technologies. Far Field presents essays from artists and scholars who address the shift in our collective cultural understanding through a selection of the most significant artistic, scientific, technological, and philosophical interpretations of the poles over the past decade. Amply illustrated and including fascinating first person accounts of projects at the poles, this cutting-edge volume will have important implications for contemporary cultural studies and the critical study of climate change. Continue reading

Techno-Ecologies: Call for Papers — Deadline: February 15, 2012 (abstracts are welcome by January 31).

Concept:: Technology can no longer be understood as an alterity (otherness) that stands in opposition to biological and social relationships. Going about our regular practices of everyday living we inhabit complex technological spheres of life that require a different, a more ‘ecological’ understanding of our relationship to technology. In analogy to the ‘deep ecology’ movement, philosopher David Rottenberg recently suggested that the notion of ‘deep technology’ relates user and context in an ecological, symbiotic way [1]. Continue reading

Coal Prize Art & Environment 2012: Rural and Farming :: Call for Entries — Application Deadline: February 12, 2012. Continue reading

Announcing RR02: Regional Relationships is very pleased to announce our second mailing, Greetings from the Cornbelts, a project by Claire Pentecost. Continue reading