HFBK

What does it take to shift from learning about the living world to learning from and with the living world?

The symposium invites us to consider artistic research as a relational practice of storytelling. Getting involved with the lives and stories of animals, trees, or the sea changes the temporalities and modes of research and art practice. Which active forms of engagement can open up spaces for mutual learning? What kinds of relationships emerge through accompanying and listening? Which stories do these relationships hold, and how can they be told? 

Taking up ecologist Gary Nabhan’s reflection : „The restoration we need to do is also a re-story-ation“ — the event gathers different perspectives and approaches that seek to tell more than only human stories. Together with the guests and participants we also want to discuss questions of responsibility and limits: How can these relationships become reciprocal? How to deal with the tension between relation and representation?
The PhD program „being(s)“ invites to this one day event with Talks, a Film Screening and a performative walk. 

Open for everyone, No registration needed. 
Language: English

Program

• 10:00–11:00
  being(s) : More-Than-Human Drama

  Introduction to the symposium and the research project ‚More-Than-Human Drama‘ as part of the being(s) graduate school at HFBK.

  
  In her artistic research, Helene Kummer examines the dramaturgical, linguistic, and aesthetic articulations of so-called „animals“ in storytelling⁠ ⁠–⁠ ⁠particularly in animation -and how these representations shape human-animal relationships. Scratch marks from raccoons on the wooden structures of Japanese temples hold a multitude of stories and relationships. They are the traces of a popular animation production from the 1970s that influenced ways of seeing and treating these animals, which are considered invasive. Together with Terue Yamauchi, the two artists collect documents, stories, and relationships connected to these contexts and are developing a feature film.

  Helene Kummer⁠ ⁠–⁠ ⁠PhD Candidate Art in Practice, HFBK
  Sara Hillhütter⁠ ⁠–⁠ ⁠Officer for Artistic Practice, HFBK

• 11:00–12:00
  Shared Worlds: Imagining Multispecies Futures

  Shared Worlds explores how contemporary art functions as an experimental space for imagining and testing utopian futures beyond anthropocentrism. Art is framed as a speculative practice that challenges the status quo and anticipates alternative forms of coexistence with nonhuman animals. Through historical and contemporary case studies the lecture examines how art envisions, rehearses, and sometimes realizes multispecies communities. Central to the discussion are questions of animal personhood, agency, radical hospitality, and feminist ethics of care. The talk proposes an expanded concept of art that takes nonhuman aesthetic practices seriously and recognizes animals as collaborators and co-creators of worlds.

  Prof. Jessica Ullrich - Kunstakademie Münster, Editor of ‚Tierstudien‘ Publication

• 12:00–13:00 
  Ancestral Sea: Where Lives and Memories Reside
  
  „Crossing Tides“ (2018) emerged from a decade-long relationship with an elderly woman—the last remaining ama (sea women / female free diver) on an island between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, who embodied a life deeply attuned to the sea and its tides. In this talk, I will share a selection of key excerpts from the film and reflect on the process of its making, discussing how I came to understand that relationships—and their storytelling—are not something we can simply „make“ or „develop,“ but rather something that emerges organically over time through ongoing negotiation with constantly shifting, living elements, including the artist, participants, the environment, the weather, and all that it shapes.

  Terue Yamauchi⁠ ⁠–⁠ ⁠Artist and Film Maker, Fukuoka (JP)

• 14:00–15:00 
  The Earth under Water: Images of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark in Medieval and Early Modern Art
  
  Narratives of a life-destroying great flood belong to the mythological heritage of numerous cultures. This catastrophe is generally understood as a form of divine punishment for human guilt and sin. In the Old Testament, Noah, as the only righteous man, is instructed to build an ark and to save not only his family but also a pair of every kind of animal—both pure and unpure—“birds and livestock and every creeping thing“ (Gen 8:17), in order to repopulate the earth after the flood. This lecture focuses on images from earlier periods of art history and, in particular, asks which species were deemed worthy of representation.

  Prof. Bettina Uppenkamp⁠ ⁠–⁠ ⁠HFBK Hamburg

• 15:00–16:00
  Perceiving Encounters: Kuhmühlenteich

  Close to the HFBK Hamburg, at the intersection of city and river, lies a place of relations: the „Kuhmühlenteich“. This short, theoretically and sensually engaged walk is an invitation to perceive the living world at this specific place. The journey begins with a brief input that informs about the site’s layered history. It is followed by a ‚Reading Walk‘ in which participants read short texts and discuss them with respect to the environment.
  
  Antonia Ulrich - Institute for Arborphilia, Animals, Aesthetics and Activism (Hamburg)