Making Contact with Deeper Times

The current moment is one perhaps especially transitional, a time that is causing re-modulations of life so as to become attuned to temporalities that exist beyond the human. There exist many nonhuman entities in the world whose existences make manifest these deeper times. Perhaps some of these beings may not be of this planet at all. This workshop will stage close encounters with some of these possibly alien, deeper time-beings that dwell among us as a way to think through questions of extraterrestrial and queer resilience. Working both indoors and outdoors gathering specimens, participants will examine collected samples with a portable microscope and think together about how to communicate with the samples collected — or their far-away relatives —through the epistolary form, letters. Participants’ collective letters may then exist as a form of delay-tolerant desire for contact with the alien whose time one cannot experience. By doing so, those in the workshop will have hopefully experienced the intertwining of deeper queer temporalities, a swerve away from the linearity and determinism of western, capitalist time.

Adriana Knouf, PhD (US) works as an artist, writer, and xenologist. She engages with topics such as wet media, space art, satellites, radio transmission, non-human encounters, drone flight, queer and trans futurities, machine learning, the voice, and papermaking. She is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxenolab, a nomadic artistic research laboratory that promotes entanglements among entities trans and xeno. Adriana regularly presents her artistic research around the world and beyond, including a work that has flown aboard the International Space Station.

Pre-circulated reading for discussion: The Introduction to Thomas Nail’s Theory of the Earth:
https://nebula.tranxxenolab.net/s/EscqJgLeXnHcLSW

How to Attend

The number of participants at the ICI Berlin is limited. Registration opens on 15 September 2021. Please indicate why you are interested in joining this workshop. The workshop will be held indoors with appropriate distancing measures in place, and outdoors nearby ICI Berlin. Please be prepared to show a proof of vaccination record or a negative COVID test from the same day.

Please come prepared with a notepad and writing utensils, or whatever kind of materials you’re interested in crafting letters with. There will be access to a printer if you prefer to bring a laptop or other digital tools.

ICI Berlin is wheelchair accessible. This workshop will involve a short trip outdoors in the vicinity of the ICI Berlin, and the organizers will be responsive to participants’ needs and abilities, but please be prepared for whatever the day’s weather may bring.

Email any further question to the organizer: alison.sperling@gmail.com

In-person, registration required
(registration opens on 15 September 2021)