The drowned World The Drowned World Toronto Biennial of Art Cinesphere Ontario Place

Charles Stankievech Guest Curator

Saturdays, 11:00 - 16:00 21 Sept – 30 Nov

Islands. Meteorites. Caves. Waves. Agua Viva. Spanning cosmological origin stories into a future extinction of civilization, The Drowned World contrasts the stretch of deep time with the cut of global ecologies and artistic resistance. Within this brave new world, the artificial boundaries of modernity’s civilizations have evaporated, and life in all its forms continues to shift in ecstatic convolution. Diving into J.G. Ballard’s 1962 archaeopsy- chic cli-fi novel, for the run of the Biennial, the Cinesphere’s spherical cinema is a world within world, mixing readings, films and sound art: genetically reconstructed screams of prehistoric creatures are echoed by the sonification of a dying star; a ritual in a palm oil plantation clashes with the submarine beats of Detroit’s bubble metropolis; the sacrifice of a muskrat, the love of an octopus. In the same year the Cinesphere opened, Brazilian Clarice Lispector wrote in “The Waters of the World”: “There it is, the sea, the most unin- telligible of non-human existences. And here is the woman, standing on the beach, the most unintelligible of living beings. As a human being she once posed a question about herself, becoming the most unintelligible of living beings. She and the sea. Their mys- teries could only meet if one surrendered to the other: the surrender of two unknowable worlds made with the trust by which two understandings would surrender to each other.” An ark on the verge of lifting off from Ontario Place’s artificial archipelago, The Drowned World turtles into its 1970’s Utopian dome architecture before its 4th dimensional orgasm leaves ripples across the largest fresh water system on the planet.

Artists

Aki Inomata Alvin Lucier Apichatpong Weerasethakul Aryo Danusiri Brandon Poole Charles Stankievech Clarice Lispector Cyprien Gaillard Dark Morph Drexciya J.G. Ballard James Tenney Jean Painleve Julian Charrere Jumana Manna Katarzyna Badach and Alfredo Ramos Fernandez Lisa Rave Marguerite Humeau Nils-Alak Valkeapaa Pauline Oliveros Revital Cohen and Tuur van Balen Ville Kokkonen / Comme des Garcons Whatever World Soundscape Project

Cover source image: Boris Spremo, 1980 Toronto Star Archives Toronto Reference Library

Far below them, the great dome of the planetarium hove out of the yellow light, reminding Kerans of some cosmic space vehicle marooned on Earth for millions of years and only now revealed by the sea.

J. G. Ballard. The Drowned World. all superficial categories converge and intertwine Hallucinations into nineteenth century arcade designs, but Archaeopsychic to the extent that it seems pointless to insist upon rather into the twentieth century planetarium? clear disciplinary boundaries. Sooner or lat- Cosquer Cave was discovered in the late While Buckminister Fuller is known as the de- er—alone or with others—each of these expedi- eighties via a deep underwater tunnel on the signer behind the popularization of the geodesic Archipelago tions will encounter the vampyroteuthis, for its south coast of France. The cave is one of the dome ubiquitously used by the military, hippy habitat is not only the depths of something like preeminent sites for cave art, with hand prints culture and world's fair pavilions, the first ex- the South China Sea but also, and perhaps even and drawings dating back 29,000 years. ample of a geodesic dome was the Zeiss plane- more so, the depths within ourselves. These two The site has been so well preserved because tarium in Jena, Germany. Fuller, as worked out A Speculative Map for depths, in other words, can be distinguished from the entrance—once opening onto a beach— in his patents of the dome, found a third way to one another only when regarded superficially. now exists well below sea-level due to melting escape the metaphysics of Plato: the integrity of The Drowned World glaciers and warming oceans. Paradoxically, the dome was neither sculptured gravitational Vilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, 1987 because of the world’s flooding, the cave has pressure (like keystone masonry) nor radial out- become an ark, preserving one of history’s ward pressure (like pneumatic domes before,) most exquisite collections of prehistoric animal but rather a balanced network of tension and Ark drawings, including extinct creatures like the compression forces that creates a membrane auk. Among the impressive menagerie, a rare independent of gravity or atmosphere. The One of the most common myths around the example of a hybrid human with a seal’s head dome’s heavenly aspirations went from com- globe shared by a variety of cultures is surviv- can be found. As an exceptional time capsule, plementing a solid base in the Pantheon, to ing the event of an epic flood: Nanabush in the site is considered to be one of the earli- resting on St. Peter’s raised pillars, to the flying The following are islands of thinking that form Anishinaabe stories, Noah in the Bible, or Manu est sites where we can trace humans making geodesic suspended from a helicopter. Most a speculative map to an archipelago for The in Hindu myths. In these stories, the whole medicine (possibly poultices and medicines famously, Buckminster designed the Ameri- Drowned World. Navigation is not determined, earth is flooded and the world is repopulated. made from minerals scraped from the stalac- can Pavilion for Montréal’s Expo 67 to house rather trade winds and currents provide easier The geological record hesitates to tell the exact tites). Across the Mediterranean Sea in Algeria, an exhibit of the active Apollo space missions. routes than others, but tacking against the wind same story of total global submersion, but the drawings in caves of the Tallasi Plateau depict Shortly after in 1971, as the wave of psychedel- originally–and still–provides a surprising lift in planet has mostly been covered at one point or floating human figures with large round heads ic culture crested into immersive cinema, the the journey. another with water — between ice ages, cata- and humanoid figures with mushrooms—spec- Cinesphere was built as if floating on the water strophic events and tectonic shifts. Over half ulated to be earliest recorded examples of of Toronto’s lakefront amongst an archipelago of of the world as we know it today is covered by hallucinogenic experiences. While the dates artificial islands (architecture by Eb Ziegler and Archaeopsychic Cephalopods deep ocean that hasn’t seen any light since the of these drawings range, the oldest preserved landscape by Michael Hough). With an enor- oceans were first created. Noah’s ark created a specimens of psychedelic medicine are recon- mous parabolic screen and surround sound, the …so we are now being plunged back into the With a shared ancestor 600 million years ago in genetic collection of earthbound species so they stituted peyote cactus buttons in the Shumula Cinesphere was the first permanent home of the archaeopsychic past, uncovering the ancient the ocean, the evolutionary paths of octopuses might survive the watery apocalypse. Today, Caves of the Chihuahuan Desert from 6000 IMAX cinema system; it projected as its first taboos and drives that have been dormant for and humans are the most different amongst the Norwegian government has created a Seed years ago. Hallucinations can occur forcibly spectacle a plane flying over the Great Lakes. epochs. The brief span of an individual life is creatures with large brains. In the twentieth Vault on the remote Arctic island of Svalbard. via ingested psychoactive plants (or today, misleading. Each one of us is as old as the entire century, while John Lily attempted to prove Repurposing a mine deep in the side of a synthesized chemicals), but hallucinations also biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are dolphins possessed their own sophisticated lan- mountain, communities from around the globe occur via strategies, including sensory depri- Islands tributaries of the great sea of its total memo- guage, he and others (including Carl Sagan and have stored indigenous seeds, fearing their ex- vation–an environment we can speculate best ry. The uterine odyssey of the growing foetus a few military engineers) attempted to create a tinction brought about by monocrop cultivation, created in prehistoric times using a cave. As Waterfront property has always been coveted. recapitulates the entire evolutionary past, and mathematical basis for a common language to environmental collapse and a conflict scorched many cultures both ancient and new can attest, As the world became richer, it not only shifted its central nervous system is a coded time scale, communicate with extraterrestrials. As a peren- earth. Since the vault is deep in a permafrost the use of rhythmic sound can synchronize the majority of its population from rural to ur- each nexus of neurons and each spinal level nial example in discussions and experiments, landscape, it was unforeseen that global warm- both a collective of people and brain waves. ban habitats, it also migrated to coastlines. Re- marking a symbolic station, a unit of neuronic the octopus serves as the best possible option ing would create an unstable landscape around Studies in and outside of the laboratory have claimed land and artificial islands are nothing time. substituting for an alien. Such experiments, the mine itself, which has recently flooded. shown “that low-frequency drum beats pro- new, global trade since Venice has encouraged which originally appeared speculative, recently duced changes in the human nervous system ports to strategically increase their shoreline. J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World, 1962 took a turn for the weirder, when a recent paper and induce trance states, which, of course, in- Manhattan island’s perimeter has extended authored by thirty scientists posited cephalo- Caves clude sensations of out-of-body travel.” Alone over the centuries, and today the city has a pods (the family of species including octopus, or in tandem, such strategies can focus one’s 171 billion dollars in precarious flood zone real Volcanoes squid and cuttlefish) are actually an extrater- Caves are all interior; they have no exterior. Un- attention on the feedback loop of the nervous estate. Ballast used to balance the exchange of restrial gene pool, which seeded the ocean by like architecture (built by , including hu- system, short-circuiting its normal process, trans-oceanic trade is often used as rubble for The first oceans on this earth were not com- arriving as frozen eggs on a comet that crashed mans) that can be surrounded and framed as an reversing the sensory-memory flow, tuning new islands. Toronto as an international port is posed of water but rather liquid rock. Without into earth. An outlying theory at best and object that contains space, a discovered cave has it to sympathetic forces, dissolving its sense no exception, with parts of the world integrated an atmosphere, the planet was a ball of gravi- more reminiscent of the science fiction story no shell. On the other side of the cave wall lies of boundaries or even doubling its perception into its construction via ballast. Ontario Place tational fire with islands of volcanoes emerging starring Cthulu by H.P Lovecraft, communica- not an exterior but the underworld: both literally of the self. As it is known that animals also was created by scuttling whole ships to form an from magma seas. Following our mythological tion amongst cephalopods is an understudied and transcendentally. Subverting twentieth cen- ingest psychoactive plants, speculations have outer reef. In the twenty-first century, Dubai imagination, the period was deemed Hadean, subject. Squid hunt in packs and cuttlefish tury Eurocentric theories of art and racism based arisen that perhaps the origin of a sense of self radically terraforms for a speculative market referencing the hellish fires of the underworld genderbend for strategic mating practices, but on the first discovery (or rather rediscovery) of in our ancestors might have occurred first as a and China dredges up islands in the South Chi- Hades. Ironically, volcanoes are the place today octopuses are generally solitary creatures–the caves situated in Europe, chthonic lacuna were hallucination before stabilizing into the ethereal na Sea to argue for a larger swath of sovereign where you can witness not the oldest parts of few exceptions being at Octopolis or being fed incorporated into historical narratives from every identity we call self-consciousness—a trait that territory in highly contested waters—support- the earth, but rather the newest development MDMA in the lab. With a pixelated screen that inhabited landmass: Africa, Asia, , and might not be unique to homo sapiens. ed by building military bases on these newest in the firmament. If you’ve ever climbed an covers their entire body (evolutionarily devel- the Americas. Modernity’s dual drive of colo- landmasses emerging from the seas. As the active volcano, with sulfur gas clouds, steam- oped for defensive camouflage,) it’s surprising nialism (which assimilated additional archeo- water warms up, the lack of ice in the Arctic ing ground and deafening sounds, one feels the large decentralized nervous system is not logical sites around the globe into a comparative Planetariums allows for navigation through the ill-famed the earth is vibrantly alive. They develop their used for more sophisticated signaling (that at theory) and scientific advancement (in geology Northwest Passage, creating new challenges to own ecosystem with their own rapidly change least we understand). One of the most ancient and radiocarbon dating) has both dramatically Nothing distinguishes the ancient from the Canada’s sovereignty by both China and Amer- weather, erasure of biomes, and new soil. Often creatures with a complex optical process- elongated the temporal epoch of Paleolithic Art modern man so much as the former's absorp- ica. The military base CFS Alert, originally a volcanoes activity results in the genesis of ing brain, it’s an enigma the octopus has not along with a host of updated speculative theo- tion in a cosmic experience scarcely known to spy station at Canada’s most northern point, a new island; they create a new microworld. evolved into a higher consciousness (it is one ries. The earliest marks are not representations later periods. … the exclusive emphasis on an functions more and more as territorial outpost Within our limited direct observation, new of the few animals that have been observed to of animals but handprints—by mostly females, optical connection to the universe, to which observing increased traffic in a region that emerged islands are an interesting case study use tools). One theory posits that sociability further challenging the canon and undoing astronomy very quickly led, contained a portent not long ago only allowed nuclear submarines for species population. In one case, in south- and collectivity might be the missing part of the default patriarchal claims about the origin of art. of what was to come. The ancient’s intercourse under the ice and airplanes above. Usually, east Asia, Krakatoa’s eruption in 1883 provides puzzle While technology has dramatically increased with the cosmos had been different: the ecstatic climate modelers and lobbyists connect a few a biological tabula rasa. But within nine certain analysis of such sites, it has been import- trance. For it is in this experience alone that we degrees of climate warming with an increase in months, a was discovered on the volca- ant to continually return to the sensory experi- gain certain knowledge of what is nearest to us sea level: a warmer ocean expands in volume no, parachuted in from an air current on which Science Fiction ence of the caves to speculate on any meaning. and what is remotest from us, and never of one and glaciers melting release vast amounts of insects had been discovered to be floating as Unlike the flash photography in textbooks, the without the other. This means, however, that water as they have done many times before jetsam five kilometers high in the atmosphere. Again, it seems rather immodest, but science spaces would be experienced as infinitely dark man can be in ecstatic contact with the cosmos at the end of ice ages. Strangely, in the Arctic A quarter of a century later the island had been fiction and anthropology do have a good deal with only glimmers of localized illumination. only communally…. Men as a species completed (and Antarctica), the melting of glaciers will colonized by birds and reptiles, mollusks and in common. As the cultural anthropologist The deep placement of much art signifies an their development thousands of years ago; but have an opposite effect locally; sea levels will insects. Dutch scientists determine that ninety must resist and be conscious of his own cultural intentional journey to produce the marks and mankind as a species is just beginning his. … actual decrease in these regions. Along with percent arrived by air, the rest perhaps on float- limitations, and bigotries, and prejudices–he not a simple passing of time during shelter. With One need recall only the experience of velocities the massive amount of ice dissolving into the ing driftwood. can’t get rid of them, but he must be conscious reduced visual perception deep in the caves, the by virtue of which mankind is now preparing ocean, the gravitational pull of the glaciers also of them–I think a science fiction writer has a re- acoustic senses would be heightened, such as to embark on incalculable journeys into the dissipates much like the moon’s tidal pull. Ad- sponsibility to do the same thing if he’s inventing when navigating at night. Importantly, a cor- interior of time, to encounter there rhythms ditionally, the shear lifting of weight as glaciers Meteorites what he calls a different planet, a different race, relation between the most acoustically resonant from which they shall draw strength as they did calve into the ocean also decompresses the alien beings, and so on. His beings can’t just be locations in caves coincides with drawings and earlier on high mountains or on the shores of ground underneath, further changing sea levels When we think of evolution and meteorites, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants with tentacles. mark marking, linking the drawings to musical or southern seas. relatively. As is rightfully the focus, other re- we usually think of the catastrophic event of You do have to do some rethinking–and [with] a ritual practices. From the beginning of the twen- gions of the world will suffer the inverse effects a meteorite striking earth and wiping out the certain self-consciousness of your own bias. But tieth century, writers (including Georges Bataille Walter Benjamin, “To the Planetarium,” 1928 of fluid mechanics and atmospheric physics. dinosaurs. Perhaps this is because it existen- you can’t get rid of your limitations; you can’t through to contemporary anthropologists) have Some of the most populated places in the world tially feels the most relevant; at any moment deculturate yourself. imagined such marks should be interpreted as are coastal cities that already were subject to a similar collision could end our own species’ part of spiritual rituals akin to shamanism. In Domes flooding, and continue to dig their own watery existence. But an antithesis to the destruction Ursula K. Le Guin, Naming Magic, 1978 other words, Paleolithic art was no longer seen grave. In the first part of the twentieth century, of all life on earth by a meteorite also exists in as fearful scratches against a chaotic void, but In the middle of the middle of the volume of Tokyo’s lack of a centralized water system re- several of the theories of the origin of life. One formative creations, oscillating between the first Peter Sloterdjik’s trilogy on the metaphysics of quired citizens at the time to pump well water theory posits that the earth’s oceans, which Vampyroteuthis Infernalis material expressions of thought or, more radical- spheres, he indulges in a short excursus about from aquifers that resulted in the city sinking provided the primordial soup for life to begin, ly, the creation of the images that generated a the history of domes. Starting with the most four meters. Jakarta, is sinking at a are the collection of water delivered by a great Examples of the species vampyroteuthis infer- new order of consciousness and society. Inter- ancient example, he traces a lineage from the rate of twenty-five centimeters a year in some bombardment of icy comets. Further theories nalis were recently caught in the South China preted contextually, the undulating surface of spherical architecture of the Pantheon, which places due to the same problem of draining of meteor bombardments are speculated to have Sea. but far too few of them. More deep sea the caves was not a canvas but a thin membrane portrays a pantheistic concept of half an under- aquifers (a problem not isolated to coastal created the planet’s atmosphere: either by their expeditions will need to be undertaken, and not between the artist and the spiritual underworld. world and half a heaven, through the monothe- areas, inland monocrop, cash crop practices are impact causing seismic activity that created only into the deepest abysses of the sea, where The hand prints in this way are not symbols but istic raised dome of the Medieval cathedral atop also draining aquifers across South East Asia volcanic eruptions releasing a variety of gases it is likely that more of life’s spectacular secrets the remains of a ritual in which sprayed pig- pillars escaping the earth, into the modernist and the subcontinent). Flooding, like all of na- to create an atmosphere, or the impacts into lie hidden than exist in all of outer space. More ment, and not paint as we think of it, sealed the commercial glass roofs of the atheistic shop- ture, is indifferent, but while richer economies an already existent ocean could have created a expeditions will also need to be undertaken hand into the wall—the hand becoming invisible ping arcade. Working from cross-sections of can build dykes and other engineering marvels vaporous atmosphere. In either case, a newly into our own inner abyss, into the insufficiently against the rock surface, penetrating into the architecture, the movement through pantheism, to hold forces at bay, remote communities are created planet earth, now with an atmosphere, studied ocean of our social and biological ori- underworld. With a cosmology that believed in a monotheism, and atheism is a productive one, often affected the most. The low laying islands was necessary to create a hospitable environ- gins. Regarding such expeditions, we have only tiered world of above and below, rituals became but Sloterdjik fails to elegantly align with his of the South Pacific are seeing whole islands ment for life to spontaneously emerge. Finally, recently come to appreciate that the specific port the events where such worlds connected. These double articulation of orb formation as deter- and communities threated. Vanuatu’s citizens there is the theory that life on earth did not of departure is more or less irrelevant. Whether unique caves were not a shelters but portals to mined by Plato: that either a transcendent force were designated the first climate change ref- spontaneously emerge (either from lighting manned by psychologists, cultural critics. geneti- the underworld that at times in its darkness (with compresses a sculptural form into a sphere or, ugees by the United Nations in 2005, but the strikes, deep-sea volcanic vents or terrestrial cists, molecular biologists, or neurophysiologists, a multitude of glow worms clinging to the roof) inversely, an orb is formed as radiating from a consequences are far and wide. In Kivalina, magma systems), but rather was seeded from an each of these differently equipped vessels will might converge with the infinite space of the centre point. Perhaps it would have been more Alaska, the ice that the Iñupiat people rely on extraterrestrial source via a virus hitching a ride begin to encounter one another soon after they stars or the depths of the ocean, swirling with productive, when engaging the atheistic age of to protect their fragile barrier island is disap- on a comet. have submerged below the surface. Down below, bioluminescent plankton. the dome, not to follow the draftsman’s stroke pearing, as is their island itself. THE ARCHAEOPSYCHIC TIMELINE Humeau’s synthetic creation of Cleopatra’s reverse engineer the regular flow or raw materi- the Drowned World voice has been informed by the descriptions of als out of the DRC. With one member operating historians, speech specialists, archaeologists, the camera on site, and other controlling the 11:13 vocal organs specialists, and ethnomusicologists. explosions remotely via a hacked SEGA video Cleopatra was the first of her dynasty to learn game controller, the video confronts our distant Schedule World Soundscape Project Egyptian. In this recital, she sings in the nine entanglement. extinct languages that she used to speak, namely: Ocean Sounds Ge'ez, Median, Ancient Greek, Arabic, Egyptian, Aramaic, Ancient Hebrew, Troglodyte, Persian. Audio Marguerite Humeau travelled around the world 12:51 6 mins to find the last translators of each of these lost 1973 languages. Drexciya Ø Bubble Metropolis Started at Simon Fraser University, the World Soundscape Project was the first of its kind Audio BRIDGE TO inside attempting a totalizing catalogue of the world’s 12:05 7 mins acoustic ecology. This is the origin of the term 1993 THE CINESPHERE the Cinesphere “soundscape” as it is used today. Started by a Aki Inomata Courtesy Clone Records group of composers, the recordings did not strive Ø for pure objectivity and were heavily biased Think Evolution #1: Kiku-ishi against industrial sounds. Ocean Sounds is the A mythologized Detroit techno duo (Gerald first track they released, hinting at what they (Ammonite) Donald and James Stinson) whose identities considered the naturalized state of the planet. officially still remain secret, Drexciya’s signature Nils-Aslak Valkeapää 11:00 Video driving tracks were laced with 808 beats and 2 mins infused with a critical mythology, as laid out in Goase dušše (The Bird Symphony) 2016-17 the liner notes to their album The Quest: “Could Solar Drumming 11:20 Courtesy the Artist it be possible for humans to breath underwater? Audio Ø A foetus in its mother’s womb is certainly alive 59:16 (looped) Marguerite Humeau Known for her projects that play with animals in an aquatic environment. During the greatest 1993 In between each work of the program is an and habitat, Aki 3D printed the form of an holocaust the world has ever known, pregnant Courtesy DAT intertitle along with a low rumbling drum sound The Opera of Prehistoric Creatures extinct Ammonite shell for a living octopus to in- America-bound African slaves were thrown / heart beat (based on a sample of the last groove habit. A shared evolutionary history, the octopus overboard by the thousands during labour for Goase dušše combines all of Valkepää’s strategies of a vinyl record). This interstitial sound is to pro- Multichannel Audio shed its hardshell, becoming more vulnerable to being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possible into one multidimensional composition. It starts vide a space between the works, while referenc- 6 mins prey but gaining advanced optical camouflage. that they could have given birth at sea to babies with a half an hour of field recordings of birds ing The Drowned World's unconscious hypnotic 2012 that never needed air? …Are Drexciyans water before shifting into recordings of reindeer with drumming as a leitmotif in Ballard’s novel. The Courtesy the Artist breathing, aquatically mutated descendants of bells (Valkepää grew up in a reindeer herding program opens and closes with longer sessions of Ø those unfortunate victims of human greed? Have family). The composition ends with a yoik, a this beating, which I am calling Solar Drumming. 12:07 they been spared by God to teach us or terrorize traditional Sami lyrical incantation. Working with experts ranging from palaeontol- us? Did they migrate from the Gulf of Mexico to ogists to surgeons, Humeau speculated about Charles Stankievech the Mississippi river basin and on to the great how the soft tissue of the vocal mechanism of lakes of Michigan? Do they walk among us? Are extinct animals might be formed. In construct- Cargo Coral (Espiritu Santo) they more advanced than us and why do they Ville Kokkonen ing pneumatic devices based on her research to make their strange music? What is their Quest?” force air through these imagined vocal cords, she Video with Multichannel Sound COMME des GARÇONS / Artec reconstructed what the screams and moans of 4 mins the Imperial Mammoth, Ambulocetus and En- 2015-19 Standard PROLOGUE telodont might sound like. The work was remixed Courtesy the Artist 12:58 into surround sound for The Drowned World. Ø Scent Cyprien Gaillard 2009 Filmed just off the coast of Vanuatu in the South 11:05 Pacific, this single shot of an underwater land- Ocean II Ocean Standard was designed as a scent based on the 11:26 scape documents one of history’s largest dumps landscape of the Finnish taiga. A collaboration J.G Ballard of infrastructure into the ocean. The result of a HD color video with sound between Artec and Comme des Garçons, its Jean Painlevé disagreement between the occupying American 11 min main ingredient is Northern Labrador Tea (Suo- The Drowned World forces in WWII and the long standing colonial 2019 pursu / Rhododendron tomentosum). The Love Life of the Octopus rule, split between Britain and France, fully func- Copyright Cyprien Gaillard Audio tioning trucks, food supplies, buildings and ma- Courtesy Sprüth Magers 7:45 Film (transferred to video) terials were scuttled into the sea to avoid giving 1962 14 mins them to the indigenous population — intended to Gaillard’s practice plays with the sedimenta- Courtesy the J.G Ballard Estate 1967 prevent rebellion. The video presents the antithe- tion of geological time versus social entropy. Ø Soundtrack: Pierre Henry sis of what the island is usually ethnographically For Ocean II Ocean, he edits together footage Courtesy Les Documents Cinématographiques fetishized for: Cargo Cults. Soundtrack is com- of fossilized patterns in the architecture of the Considered to be the first penning in the genre posed from the original performance by Juanita Moscow subway station with footage of the of cli-fi (or ), Ballard’s hard science Painlevé’s short films, starting at the beginning of Hall for Roger and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical dumping of obsolescent New York subway cars fiction novel imagines a world in which a di- the 20th century, were scientific in nature, but his South Pacific, which is based on America’s occu- into the ocean. Temporalities of future and past, minished ionosphere has resulted in the ice caps gaze constantly rediscovered the wonder of the pation of Vanuatu. natural and industrial, flood into a wash of video, melting and a radical shift in the world’s ecology. natural world. He was influenced by the Surre- composed to a soundtrack of steel drumming. With a climate that has regressed to the Triassic alist movement and, after originally shooting a period environment, so have the planets’ species film in 1928 on the octopus, he returned to the through accelerated genetic mutation from enigmatic creature again in 1967. Pierre Henry 12:11 extreme solar radiation. But while Ballard’s work (1927-2017), pioneer of musique concrete, com- 13:09 carefully considers the human environment, posed the soundtrack. Lisa Rave does so as deep dives into the human psyche. Dark Morph The novel is less a prophecy of rising sea levels, Europium and more about the evolutionary friction of soci- Son(ng)que ety grappling with its ancient irrational drives in 11:40 Video a changing world. 20 minutes Audio Pauline Oliveros 2014 5 mins Courtesy the Artist 2019 and The Deep Listening Band Courtesy the Artists An essay film that connects the colonial history Ø Troglodyte’s Delight of with the current plan to develop deep sea mining in the Sea of Bismarck Dark Morph’s collaboration between Sigur Ros Audio by the Canadian corporation Nautilus. Using member Jónsi Birgisson and electronic musician 12 mins the Rare Earth element Europium as narrative Carl Michael von Hausswolff continues their 1990 thread much like W.G. Sebald might do, Rave individual ethereal explorations of the emo- Courtesy of The Pauline Oliveros Trust and The connects the mineral composition of shells orig- tional and extrasensory aspects of sound. Both Ministry of Maåt Members ASCAP inally used as currency to the global market of an installation and an album composed from ¿What Next? Recordings luminescent television screens. underwater field recordings in the South Pacific, Nonsequitur these atmospheric deep dives thrust us into the Copyright Deep Listening Band currents of today’s rising oceans. Ø 12:31 Deep listening is a practice developed by Oli- veros to explore the spectrum of voluntary and Revital Cohen 13:15 involuntary listening, in order to create a height- ened awareness of sonic space and the inner self. and Tuur van Balen James Tenney Troglodyte’s Delight (troglodyte meaning one who dwells in caves) was recorded in a cave for its Trapped in the Dream of the Other For Ann (rising) unique echoes, reverberations and delays. Deep listening for deep time. Multichannel Audio Video 12 mins 21 mins 1969/2019 11:57 2018 Re-imagined for surround audio and analog elec- Courtesy the Artists tronics by Tom Erbe. Organized by Raven Chacon and Michael Winter. Marguerite Humeau In what feels like a first-person shooter video Courtesy of James Tenney Estate. game, Trapped documents a networked perfor- Cleopatra mance — not only of custom made pyrotechnics While a research professor at York University Multichannel Audio in a Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the 1960s (a campus today annexed into the 8 mins mine, but also of the global supply chain. The metropolis of Toronto), Tenney composed a 2014 artists had the bespoke fireworks made in China psychoacoustic work that gives the impression Courtesy the Artist and tracked their shipping to the mine in order to that the music’s pitch continually climbs. Based on the phenomenon called Sheppard Tones— around Chaing Mai, Thailand, Weerasethakul’s EPILOGUE The Drowned World is published as part of the named after his colleague at Bell Labs—the work opaque dream narrative engages the darker side Toronto Biennial of Art in partnership with the creates an intense anxiety with its perpetual of land rights issues. Appropriating fumigation Cinesphere, Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada rising, creating shifting gestalts of the listener machines used for annual insecticide spraying, from September 21st to Dec 1, 2019. dropping or rising within the soundscape. For the Weerasethakul creates a Surrealist film, in which 15:42 fiftieth anniversary of the work, Tom Erb, Raven an atmosphere descends on the village, drown- The Drowned World Chacon and Michael Winter worked together to ing its people and resulting in a terrible violence. Clarice Lispector make a multichannel sound version specifically Charles Stankievech for The Drowned World’s venue, the Cinesphere Waters of the World Guest Curator at Ontario Place (an archipelago that each year floods more and more with the rising levels of 14:04 1971 James King the Great Lakes). Read by Natalia Gomez Technical Manager Jumana Manna Translation Stefan Tobler Courtesy New Directions Publishing Wild Relatives Ø Toronto Biennial of Art 13:27 Video Written in 1971 (the year the Cinesphere was Patrizia Libralato Brandon Poole 66 mins built), Lispector’s short story lays out the themes Executive Director 2018 she later develops in her mystical masterpiece Carla's Island, 1981 Courtesy the Artist Agua Viva (1973) in which everything is connect- Susannah Rosenstock ed. Literally translated as “living water” with all Deputy Director & Director of Exhibitions Video Manna’s video follows the withdrawal of seeds its mystical power, in the Brazilian dialect it also 04:36 from the deep storage vault on the arctic island refers to jelly fish—one of the earth’s most ancient Candice Hopkins 2019 of Svalbard to a displaced community in Leb- and potentially deadly creatures. In Waters of Senior Curator Courtesy the Artist anon affected by the crises of the Syrian war. the World, after she becomes one with the ocean, Contrasting two different worlds and yet how “She knows she has created a danger. A danger as Tairone Bastien A serendipitous discovery while rummaging they are connected, Wild Relatives tells a com- ancient as the human being.” With the origin of Curator through archival test footage for IMAX, Poole pelling story focusing on the smallest details of life emerging from the oceans, and each human’s found rare frames of what is widely considered seeds and human emotions about how every- own life cycle beginning floating in the womb, life Katie Lawson to be the first computer generated images of wa- thing is connected when it comes to biodiversity, and death comes full circle in our current rela- Assistant Curator ter, produced in 1981 by Nelson Max. Originally trade and conflict. tionship to the sustainability of our oceans. rendered on a supercomputer normally used for military simulations, the source code and footage cinesphere has been lost. Poole scanned the 70mm IMAX Ontario Place negatives to create a seamless loop of waves 15:08 15:47 endlessly crashing on the beach, accompanied Nancy Rowland by a soundtrack generated out of field recordings Julian Charrière Solar Drumming General Manager of an anti-nuclear protest at the supercomput- er’s site. While the cinematic scene constructs a Iroojrilik Glenn Shaver pastoral image, the stuck loop of Poole’s video Senior Manager sourced from a nuclear research facility, cuts to Video Product and Experience Development the core of Gene Youngblood’s observation made 21 mins at the SIGGRAPH conference the work was first 2018 Gillian Zulauf premiered: "The Simulators of the Apocalypse Copyright Julian Charrière Project Lead should be honoured to share the SIGGRAPH Courtesy Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin; Gal- Preview Screening Product and Experience Development spotlight with noble amateurs—heroic warriors erie Tschudi, Zuoz; Sean Kelly, New York; Sies + of the Electronic Age—who shall inherit the Höke, Dusseldorf Thursday, Sept. 19th Tim Hennigar world of simulation by living in the worlds they Project Manager simulate.” From out of the pages of J.G. Ballard’s The Ter- Production Services minal Beach and into the landscape of the Bikini *See above for work details. Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Charrière’s video dives underwater to find military shipwrecks J.G. Ballard Publication 13:32 and then surfaces in the jungle at the foot of The Drowned World* ruined bunkers. What remains are the remnants Writing and Design: Charles Stankievech Kashya Badach of nuclear experimentation during the Cold War World Soundscape Project Copy Editing: Rosemary Heather that sustained a neocolonialism in the South Ocean Sounds* and Alfredo Ramos Fernández Pacific — and a haunted nature that still radiates. Pantone Metallic Silver and Black Ink Duotone A project created with Nadim Samman, together Pauline Oliveros on Premium 80 35 lb Paper Surfing Buena Vista they also produced an accompanying novel, As Troglodyte’s Delight* Typefaces: AmarilloUSAF and Klinic We Used to Float (2018). Printer: Avi Baciu, Centraweb, Toronto Video Marguerite Humeau 3 mins The Opera of Prehistoric Creatures* 2007 Thank You Courtesy the Artists 15:29 Apichatpong Weerasethakul Vapour* Ala Roushan, Rosalia Engchuan, Ute Meta Surfing Buena Vista documents youth in Ha- Whatever Bauer, David Morris, David Teh, Charles Es- vana, Cuba grabbing onto passing vehicles to Julian Charrière che, Ravon Chacon, Michael Winter, Tom Erb, leisurely propel them through the flooded main ALMA Music Box An Invitation to Disappear Markus Reymann, Francesca von Habsburg, strip during a torrential downpour. As storm 4K Video TBA21 Academy, Nadim Samman, Juan Oli- frequency and severity increases in the Caribbe- Video 76 mins phant, Renée Lear, Kenneth Montague, Sarah an, the island of Cuba is no stranger to strategies 2014 2018 Roushan, Patrick Riesterer, Brandon Poole, of resistance transforming challenges into a 4 mins Copyright Julian Charrière David Schlechtriem, Barry Truax, Alex Wood- celebration of life. Courtesy Whatever Courtesy Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin; Galerie side, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Tschudi, Zuoz; Sean Kelly, New York; Sies + Clone Records, Wyllie Agency and the J.G. The collective Whatever (formerly known as Höke, Dusseldorf Ballard Estate, the Pauline Oliveros Trust, the Party) worked with the scientists at the ALMA James Tenney Estate, New Directions Publishing, 13:35 astronomical observatory to create an artistic Shot in Southeast Asia, Julian Charrère’s film An Sprüth Magers, the John H. Daniels Faculty of visualization and sonification of a dying star. In Invitation to Disappear records a psychosocial Architecture, Landscape and Design at the Uni- Aryo Danusiri order to make the sound, they designed a music transcendent rave set in the fields of a mono- versity of Toronto, and all of the incredible artists box that translated the electromagnetic data into culture palm oil plantation. A linear camera shot that were trusting enough to allow their work to Don’t Forget to Wear A Smile childlike notes recalling the famous tones from through nauseatingly infinite rows of trees is be included in this unorthodox project. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which were underpinned by the mesmerizing pulse of natural Video played by a child on a xylophone in 1977. sounds and techno beats, developed together With the creative and generous contribution of 5:30 mins with the British DJ and producer Inland. The COMME des GARÇONS and MVS Proseminar, 2018 film also marks the first outcome of the artist’s University of Toronto—John H. Daniels Faculty Courtesy the Artist collaboration with philosopher Dehlia Hannah, of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Sensory Ethnography Lab and Film Study Center 15:33 responding to the 200th anniversary of a volcanic (Harvard) Production eruption in Indonesia that plunged the world into Alvin Lucier darkness and extreme weather—a climate cooling Text and Publication Copyright Jakarta, monsoon season. Set in the house of a crisis remembered in Europe as the “year without Charles Stankievech butcher in the riverside slum area of Ciliwung Sferics a summer.” The delirium of the rave feels increas- (the city's main river). While the father is at work, ingly alienating within the man-made grid of Published by Press 2019 the children enjoy the moment. The shot was Audio the plantation, culminating in feelings of unease recorded a few months before the mass eviction 8 mins competing with the temptation of intrigue. Fog, of the area, part of the ongoing gentrification 1981 flashing strobes, and overwhelming sounds turn project with troublesome justification of making Courtesy the Artist the palm grove into a melancholic party zone in the city flood free. which the lack of people only exacerbates the Sferics, short for atmospherics, is a sound record- dystopian vibe. ing of natural radio phenomena that Lucier first attempted to capture with Pauline Oliveros in the 13:43 sixties. It took until the eighties, however, before he successfully developed a system that could Ø Denotes specially remastered and/or mixed Apichatpong Weerasethakul translate the electromagnetic energy of solar for the IMAX multichannel sound system of the radiation and lighting strikes as it interacted with Cinesphere by Charles Stankievech. Vapour the ionosphere. In Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962), it is the destruction of the ionosphere, Video (silent) which protects the earth from excessive solar 21 mins radiation, that triggers massive climate change. 2015 Courtesy Kick the Machine

In a quiet village, a thick white vapour exudes from inside the homes, eventually taking over the whole landscape. Filmed in his home area Oil local. Where originally climate studies was born leaving their birthplace of Africa for Mada- References Involving Drums,” Human Biology 34, no. 2, May out of national infrastructure that only states gascar and Australia, then the South Pacific, 1962: 151-160. Illuminating and lubricating the modern world, could afford to invest in (often directly under one by one each biome was devastated by the the oil industry has a long history. Burn- the control of colonial and military logistics,) presence of humans. New Zealand, only first Siegel, Ronald K. 1977. “Hallucinations,” Scientific ing forests for fuel in the medieval era was a the future of climate data is shifting more and touched by humans 800 years ago, provides American 237, no. 4, October 1977: 132-141. global endemic, whether in China or Europe more towards the megacorporations that can af- the clearest record of human arrival decimat- (and later Brazil to replenish a barren Europe). ford satellite launches . Such a pooling of data ing the local ecosystem. The Americas were Terry, Martin et al. 2006. “Lower Pecos and Co- Fossilized coal was a welcome new method also means it’s for sale to the highest bidder. It no exception to a mass extinction of most ahuila peyote: new radiocarbon dates,” Journal of of carbon withdrawal from the deposits of the serves to remember that one of the most bom- large mammals, coinciding with when humans Archaeological Science 33, no. 7: 1017-1021. earth, opening up deep time debts. With such bastic counterculture movements in the was first arrived millennia ago (though the debate a move, the carbon illusion first manifested. called the Weather Underground. still continues about the causes of extinction: Archaeopsychic What appeared originally as a short circuit- human or climate change, or most likely a Ballard, J.G. 1962. The Drowned World. New York: Planetariums ing and a greater sense of control over nature, complex combination). Ironically, much later, Berkeley Books. Walter Benjamin. 1928/2016. “To the Planetari- instigated the current crisis of extreme weather Feedback some species, like horses, were replenished um,” One-Way Street. Cambridge: Belknap Press. and climatic disasters. As the steam engine’s by long extinct relatives with the arrival of eclipsing of waterpower in Britain demonstrat- There are few theoretical models that went as European colonizers, although of course along Volcanoes ed, coal was immune to seasonal growth and viral in the last century as feedback. Biologist with much more damaging invasive species, Carson, Rachel. 1961. “The Birth of an Island,” Domes drought, while oil could be stored and trans- Jakob von Uexküll in the twenties established a including themselves, echoing once again The Sea Around Us. 2nd ed., 83-96, Oxford: Ferguson, Graeme. 1971. North of Superior, IMAX ported to locations with the greatest capital diagrammatic understanding of a looping feed- the regular devastation of newly contacted Oxford Press. film. value and labour exploitation opportunities. back between the organism and the environ- worlds. The exception to the basic outcome Perhaps not surprisingly, the British’s meddling ment. Basic biological theory now agrees there of Homo sapiens versus all other mammals Sloterdjik, Peter. 2014. Globes: Spheres II. Los in petropolitics we are so familiar with in the are two feedback loops: 1. an organism senses occurred on the connected mega landmass of Meteorites Angeles: Semiotext(e). Translation edition, 2014. twentieth century Middle East is also not the the world and reacts to the world, this reaction Africa-Eurasia where humans evolved along- Kasting, James F. 2018. “Early Earth Atmosphere origin of their colonial annexing of the black changes the world and in turn is newly sensed side large mammals—each in turn countering and Oceans.” In Earth’s Oldest Rocks. 2nd ed. Stankievech, Charles. 2019. “Until O Becomes ooze. Burma could be considered, according to by the organism, thus creating a new reaction, each other’s adaptive evolutionary turns. A Amsterdam: Elsevier. Just a Dot,” In Search of Expo, edited by Lesley Amitav Ghosh, as the first petroleum state, with and so on; 2. this loop into the outerworld must combination of factors–such as overhunting, Johnstone and Monika Kin Gangon. Montréal: a practice of extraction and use dating back be copied as an innerworld loop in the nervous disrupting the food chain and the destruction Russel, Michael J., et al. 2014. “The Drive to Life McGill-Queen’s Press. a millennium. With deposits seeping directly system to register the organism’s own actions. of habitat for agriculture and terraforming–has on Wet and Icy Worlds,” Astrobiology 14, no. 4. onto the surface of the earth at Yenangyaung, Without this second internal loop, the organism long been the source of blame for the current specific communities scooped and brokered would not be able to distinguish between what extinction of a broad range of species. And as Islands the resource to supply oil for primarily illumi- has changed in the environment from exter- technology in food production and medicine Cephalopods The Economist. 2019. “Briefing: The Rising Seas.” nating lamps but also greasing axles (among nal causes, and what has changed due to its has exponentially maintained human popula- Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2016. Other Minds: The Aug. 17th, 2019, pp. 15-18. a variety of medicinal and construction uses). own actions. Or inversely, it might mistakenly tion growth, the effects are felt more and more. Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligence. Lon- Intervention by the British Empire in the 1850s think the world has rotated around itself, when Paradoxically, in evolutionary terms, humans don: Williams Collins. Stankievech, Charles. 2010. “Warm War,” Mag- propelled the King to nationalize the oil fields in fact the organism has only rotated its own have had an inverse effect on certain species. netic Norths, Ellen and Bina Gallery, Concordia and develop an advanced oil refinement and view. Nervous systems of all sorts have evolved The most successful gene pools on the planet, Moynihan, M. 1985. Communication and non- University. production economy—only to finally be usurped different feedback loops, optimizing for various if counting biomass is a factor of evolutionary communication by cephalopods. Bloomington: by the British in 1885. From the Industrial functions from breathing to mobility. The hunt- success, are humans and their domesticat- Indiana University Press. United Nations. 2005. “UN environmental body Revolution to the Iranian Revolution, oil refuses ing of prey combines several feedback loops as ed DNA, such as wheat, cattle and chickens. hails relocation of islanders threatened by cli- to be easily controlled, slipping through the well as a higher order of predictive feedback. Livestock accounts for double the mass of Sagan, Carl (ed.). 1973. “Discussion,” Soviet-Amer- mate change.” Press Release, Dec 6. clutches of those that attempt to hold on to it, Philosophers posit this predictive process might humans and the world’s population of chicken ican Conference on the Problems of Commu- resulting instead in the scorching of nations be one of the steps to the origin of conscious- tallies around 23 billion. The domestication of nication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 1971. and landscapes. Coming full circle, the paradox ness: to predict the future actions of prey, the wheat considered to be the catalyst for seden- Cambridge: MIT Press. Oil of oil returns to trees. In Southeast Asia today, position of the self must be accounted for. Prey tary civilizations in the Golden Crescent has Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil Capital, 164-193. the largest fields of oil production are again not evading predators similarly entails positing evolved to have five times the amount of DNA Wooster, Harold & Paul L. Garvin, Lambros D. London: Verso. deep in the ocean or require drilling, but instead the intentions of the hunter, self-conscious- as compared to humans, arranged in a robust Callimahos, John C. Lilly, William O. Davis & lie on the surface, born out of jungle burning, ness derived from a strategy of positing minds hexagon structure. With humans accelerating Francis J. Heyden. March 1966. “Communication Ghosh, Amitav. 2016. The Great Derangement. making space for palm oil plantations. From in others. A few decades after von Uexküll species extinction rates by 100 times, Homo with Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” IEEE Spectrum Chicago: University of Chicago Press. the tar sands of Canada to the palm plantations sketched out his theories, Norbert Wiener (who sapiens’ 200,000-year-old age suddenly faces 3, no. 3,. 153-163. of Indonesia, oil continues to be a site where for a stint was a zoologist grad student but an expiration date. indigenous claims, political land use and global eventually focused on mathematics) worked Clouds consumer demand clash. during World War II on the problem of air Science Fiction Babbage, Charles. 1832/2010. On the Economy of defense: How does one control in real time the Pulsars Le Guin, Ursula K.. 2019. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Machinery and Manufactures. Cambridge: Cam- trajectory of anti-aircraft fire when the target Last Interview and Other Conversations, edited bridge University Press. Clouds is continuously moving? Out of this project, he In 1967, Pulsars were discovered and first by D. Streitfeld. Brooklyn: Melville House. developed a systems theory of feedback which thought to be signals from aliens because of The chemical changes which thus take place are became the backbone for the field of cybernet- their regular radiating patterns. Eventual- Weather constantly increasing the atmosphere by large ics. By the time the West Coast counterculture ly astronomers deduced they were instead a Vampyroteuthis Infernalis Edwards, Paul N. 2010. A Vast Machine: Com- quantities of carbonic acid [i.e. carbon dioxide] movement demanded to see a Whole Earth im- fast-rotating neutron star and not radio signals. Flusser, Vilém and Louis Bec. 2012. Vampyro- puter Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of and the other gases noxious to animal life. The age and inspire the environmental movement As America’s frontier continually expanded teuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Global Warming. Cambridge, MA: MIT. means by which nature decomposes these ele- in the sixties, the concept of ecology was based beyond the West Coast and the South Pacific Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranatural- ments, or reconverts them into a solid form, are on computational feedback—literally applying into outer space, it followed a line of ideolog- iste, translated by Valentine A. Pakis. Minneapo- Stankievech, Charles. 2015. “Magnetic Anoma- not sufficiently known. ecology models to a landscape by processing it ical friendly first contact myths, such as the lis: University of Minnesota Press. lies in the Arctic: Colonial Resource Extraction, in a circuit board. “Nature” moved beyond en- Hollywood blockbuster Close Encounters of the Meteoric Cults, and the Rare Earth Age,” in Rare Charles Babbage, On the Economy of tropic theories into sets of data to be managed Third Kind (released in 1977). Outside of the Earth, edited by B.Ondreicka and N.Samman. Machinery and Manufactures, 1832 as closed worlds. Silicon Valley, as a Brand, fictional world of aliens trying to communicate Ark Berlin: Sternberg Press. dreamed of an upgrade from a carbon mine. with humans (also in 1977), Carl Sagan famously Armour, R. C. 1905. North American Indian Fairy The most powerful form of artificial intelligence organized the “Golden Record” as an artifact Tales: Folklore and Legends. Philadelphia: Gib- Weather based on deep learning, which is modeled on to be placed on the Voyager satellites. In the bings and Company, Ltd.; J. B. Lippincott Co. Feedback neural network feedback loops, is now uti- shape of a musical disc, Sagan attempted to Dennett, Daniel. 1996. Kind of Minds: Toward an If climate is the history of weather, then it’s lized for everything from optimizing consumer crystalize a portrait of humankind in the hopes Carrington, D. 2017. “Arctic stronghold of world’s Understanding of Consciousness. New York, NY: a collection of stories and data gleaned from services to revolutionizing weather forecasting. it might be found by an intelligent being outside seeds flooded after permafrost melts.'' The Basic Books. dusty archives to remote field stations, from On the immediate horizon, Luddites fear losing our solar system. A rare project that seemed to Guardian, May 19, 2017. oral myths to satellites. Surprisingly, one of the jobs to the thinking machine; on the far horizon, be an alternative to the normal military indus- von Uexküll, J. 1926. Theoretical Biology, London: most important storytellers has always been the terror of the immortality of the one percent trial complex trajectory of space research at the Genesis 5-9. Harcourt, Brace and Co. the military. The weather has always been if they can upload their consciousness into syn- time, the Voyager’s message in a bottle tossed essential in order to plan and execute invasions thetic circuits or transplant cerebral organoids. into the cosmic ocean is unlikely to finding Caves Wiener, N. 1954. “Man, Machine and the World and other military maneuvers. In more con- intelligent extraterrestrial life—especially before Bataille, Georges. 1955. Prehistoric Paintings: Las- About,” Medicine and Science, New York Acade- temporary times, weather modeling in both big human beings become extinct. The gesture at caux or the Birth of Art. Lausanne: Skira. my of Medicine and Science, edited by I. Galder- and small ways is intertwined with the military Extinction best might serve as the satellite encountered in ston. New York: International Universities Press. concern with atmosphere. Major leaps in the Star Trek’s episode “First Light,” where human- Clottes, Jean & David Lewis-Williams. 1998. field of meteorology occurred in the twentieth While the biodiversity of the earth flourishes ist Captain Jean-Luc Picard discovers a probe The Shamans of Prehistory. New York: Harry N. century due to the explosion of computational with its vastly different ecosystems, the frank from a planet with a civilization that has gone Abrams. Extinction power. The source of this power stemmed from reality is that ninety-nine percent of the spe- extinct because of climate change. A culture Barnosky, Anthony D., Paul L. Koch, Robert S. the need to analyze data from the air, but not cies to have ever swam, crawled or flown on evaporated by a desiccated planet, Picard’s David, Bruno. Cave Art. 2017. London: Thames & Feranec, Scott L. Wing & Alan B. Shabel. 2004. of the organic sort. Rather, air defence systems the planet have already gone extinct. On the hallucinogenic encounter with the probe leaves Hudson. Science, New Series 306, no. 5693, October 1, in the Cold War were developed as the first dark side, the odds on surviving are not that him as the sole witness to their vanquished 2004: 70-75. real-time processing computers to analyse flight favourable, but on the bright side, the plan- civilization--the only remnant of their culture Gielion, Siegfried. 1942. The Eternal Present. New patterns and detect invading forces. IBM’s et over time has had an incredible range of passed on by his learning to play one of their York: Pantheon Books. Brenchley, Rachel, et al. 2012. “Analysis of the Whirlwind (the world’s first computer defined as mutations in constantly shifting climates. The musical instruments. bread wheat genome using whole-genome shot- we use it today) was not built to track hurri- pressing question is about the future. Nor- Scarre, Chris. 1989. “Painting by Resonance,” gun sequencing.” Nature 491, November 29, 2012: canes as its namesake might suggest, it was mally extinction occurs at a slow rate for each Nature, vol. 338, 382. March 30, 1989. 705–710. built to track bombers. In the fifties, Canada individual species with a life span of about one Agua Viva and the United States built a Joint Arctic Weath- to ten million years before a variety of factors Simpson, L. 2013. “Pipty,” Islands of Decolonial David J. Meltzer. 2009. First Peoples in a New er Station (JAWS) at the tip of the Canadian snuff out its genetic identity. Occasionally, It’s with such profound happiness. Such a hal- Love: Stories & Songs. Winnipeg: ARP Books. World: Colonizing Ice Age America. Berkeley: archipelago under the fog of meteorology, but mass extinctions occur that cross the boundar- lelujah. Hallelujah, I shout, hallelujah merging University of California Press. the station was more importantly a classified ies of a species and affect whole food chains, with the darkest human howl of the pain of Steeds, Lucy. 2015. “Georges Bataille: Unhinging signals intelligence station to spy on the Soviets ecosystems and biomes. Major volcanic erup- separation but a shout of diabolic joy. Because Prehistory, Unbecoming Humanity,” Allegory of Kolbert, Elizabeth. 2014. The Sixth Extinction: An and to provide the northernmost triangulation tions disrupting the atmosphere or asteroid no one can hold me back now. I can still rea- the Cave Painting. edited by M. Mircan and O. Unnatural History. London: Picador. of a radar network called the DEW Line. One impacts are the popular theories in some of son—I studied mathematics, which is the mad- Gerven. Milan: Mousse Publishing. could argue with a list longer than mentioned the five mass extinctions registered in the geo- ness of reason—but now I want the plasma—I Peterson Stearns, Beverly and Stephen C. Stea- here, it is not a coincidence the military keeps logical strata. Currently, scientists are describ- want to eat straight from the placenta. I am a Hallucinations rns. 2000. Watching, from the Edge of Extinction. borrowing codewords from the weather. While ing the onslaught of a sixth great extinction — little scared: scared of surrendering completely Clottes, J., J. Courtin & L. Vanrell. 2005. Cosquer New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. guarding borders and espionage are some of the but this time the cause is internal and caused because the next instant is the unknown. The redécouvert. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. greatest forces working against international by one of the species: Homo sapiens. Many next instant, do I make it? or does it make itself? collaboration (and it is often told that the world Anthropocene arguments anchor the inflex- We make it together with our breath. Jay, Mike. 2019. Mescaline: The Global History of Pulsars wide web we ubiquitously use comes out of ion point with the rise of capitalism and fossil the First Psychedelic. New Haven: Yale University Sagan, Carl. 1994. Pale blue dot: a vision of the military resources), inversely, controlling air fuel burning in the Industrial Revolution, but Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva, 1973 Press. human future in space. New York : Random traffic and modelling climate has been among Homo sapiens have a much longer rap sheet House. the greatest forces for creating global networks, when it comes to wiping out their planetary Lewis-Williams, D. 2004. The Mind in the Cave. such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate cohabiters. For the most part, with every new New York: Thames & Hudson. Change (IPCC). The atmosphere can only be home Homo sapiens colonized they wiped out Charles Stankievech Agua Viva understood if approached from a global per- mass populations of megafauna. Evidence Written at Mount Etna, Sicily Neher, Andrew. 1962. “A Physiological Expla- Lispector, Clarice. 1973/2014. Agua Viva. Trans. spective with global participation. Climate is not is easiest to track on an island where, after and Toronto, Canada. nation Of Unusual Behavior In Ceremonies S. Tobler. New Directions Books. J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) was born in Shang- Lisa Rave currently lives and works in Berlin/ the Drowned World hai and lived in England from 1946 until his Germany. She studied film at the European Film death in London. In 1954, he was stationed with College in Denmark and at the Universität der Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen are the Royal Air Force in Moose Jaw, Canada where Künste, Berlin. In 2010, she received the El- London based artists working across objects, he discovered science fiction magazines on the sa-Neumann-Scholarship and was the winner installation and film that explore process of Bios military base. He is the author of nineteen nov- of the Bremen Award for Video Art 2012/2013. production as cultural, personal and political els, including , The Drought, Her exhibitions and screenings include: the practices. Their work was recently shown at and High Rise, with many of them made into Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; Lofoten the Renaissance Society in Chicago; Serpentine major films, including directed by David International Art Festival (LIAF); Arsenal Berlin; Cinema, London; Fotomuseum, Winterthur; Cronenberg. Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Para Site, Hong Kong; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Glasmoog Cologne; Württembergischer Kunstv- Contemporary, Vienna; HKW, Berlin; Museum James Tenney (1934–2006) was a pioneer erein; 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial; FLORA ars+- of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and Congo Inter- in the field of electronic and computer music, natura, Bogota; Meulensteen Gallery, New York; national Film Festival. It is part of the permanent working with Max Mathews and others at the Chisenhale Gallery, London; Neuer Berliner collections of the MoMA, New York and M+ Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early sixties Kunstverein, Berlin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Museum in Hong Kong. to develop programs for computer sound-gen- Berlin; and International Short Film Festival eration and composition. He wrote works for a Oberhausen, Oberhausen. variety of media, both instrumental and elec- Ville Kokkonen is a Finnish industrial design- tronic, many of them using alternative tuning er born in Helsinki and based in Zurich. Since systems. He was the author of several articles on Marguerite Humeau lives and works in Lon- starting his own practice in 2004, Kokkonen has musical acoustics, computer music, and musical don. Recent solo exhibitions include Tate Britain; worked with leading companies in the field of form and perception. A teacher since 1966, he Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich; Schinkel design and technology, focusing on strategic de- was Distinguished Research Professor at York Pavillon, Berlin; Nottingham Contemporary, sign and product development, with clients such University (Toronto), where he taught for twen- Nottingham, UK; and, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Her as Nokia, Iittala, Wärtsilä, Elixair, Ensto, Stora ty-four years, and last held the Roy E. Disney work has been included in group exhibitions at Enso and UPM. Between 2005 to 2014 Kokkonen Aki Inomata is an artist and visiting researcher Charles Stankievech diverse body of work, Family Chair in Musical Composition at the the Hayward Gallery, London; Haus der Kunst, worked with Artek, first running its R&D pro- at Waseda University. Focusing on how the act which includes installations, curatorial projects California Institute of the Arts. Munich; Château de Versailles; Les Abattoirs gram and from 2008 onwards as Design Director of “making” is not exclusive to mankind, she and performance lectures, has been shown Musée FRAC Occitanie, Toulouse; High Line, of the company. Ville Kokkonen currently holds develops collaborations with living creatures into internationally at institutions including the Jean Painleve (1902-1989) studied medicine, New York; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenha- the position of Professor of Practice at Aalto artworks. Her major artworks include Why Not Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; physics and geology. He was a pioneer of scien- gen; Manifesta 11, Zurich; Thyssen-Bornemisza University, School of Arts Design and Architec- Hand Over a “Shelter” to Hermit Crabs?, in which Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der tific cinema, who managed to defend the film Art Contemporary, Vienna; the Museum of ture in Helsinki, Finland. she created city-like shells for hermit crabs and Welt, Berlin; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; medium as a serious means of research within Modern Art, New York; and elsewhere. Humeau I Wear the Dog’s Hair, and the Dog Wears My Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; the scientific community. From 1925 to 1982, received the Zurich Art Prize in 2017, and the Hair, in which the artist and her dog wear capes Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal; Canadi- Jean Painlevé made more than 200 films, mainly Battaglia Foundry Sculpture Prize in 2018. made out of each other’s respective hair. Her an Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and docu- dedicated to the marine world. He projected his Whatever is a creative studio that makes recent exhibitions include The XXII Triennale di menta, and the Berlin, Venice and SITE Santa Fe vision of society onto nature, giving an ironic whatever. Based in Tokyo, New York, Taipei, Milano; Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Biennials. He was twice a finalist for the Sobey colour to his strange and brutal films. He was Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa (1943-2001), known and Berlin, they are a team of multidisciplinary Survival; Aki Inomata, and Why Not Hand Over Art Prize, and his curatorial project CounterIn- a dissident of the Surrealist group and refused as Áillohaš in the Northern Sami language, was designers, coders, engineers, and producers a “Shelter” to Hermit Crabs?, at Musée d’arts de telligence and his solo exhibition Monument as André Breton's authority. born into a reindeer herding family. He played with years of global experience. Together, they Nantes, France, 2018. Ruin won OAAG best exhibition awards, in 2014 an important role in the revitalization of the encompass a wide-ranging gamut of technical and 2015 respectively. traditional Sámi yoik, which he described as: “A and design skills, allowing “us to come up with Julian Charriere, born in Morge, Swit- way to calm reindeer. To frighten wolves. The dream-like concepts that we can bring to life.” Alfredo Ramos Fernandez was born in zerland, currently lives and works in Berlin. A yoik is used to recall friends, even enemies.” 1964 in Havana. He lives and works in Berlin. Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) was born to a former student of Olafur Eliasson and participant The yoik steps into another spiritual world. He He earned a Geography graduate degree and Jewish family in western Ukraine. As a result of of the Institut für Raumexperimente, Charriére was awarded the Prix Italia for the composi- World Soundscape Project was estab- worked for a time as a researcher at the Acad- the antisemitic violence they endured, the family has exhibited his work at the Parasol Unit, Lon- tion Goase dušše (The Bird Symphony) in 1993 lished as an educational and research group at emy of Sciences of Cuba. From 1993 to 2001, fled to Brazil in 1922, and Clarice Lispector grew don; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne; Centre and performed at the opening ceremony for the Simon Fraser University during the late sixties he worked with theater groups, but in 2001 he up in Recife. Following the death of her mother Culturel Suisse, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer. He was and early seventies. The original group of re- devoted himself entirely to his photographic when Clarice was nine, she moved to Rio de Welt, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; TBA21 in awarded the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize searchers included: R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard work. Recent exhibitions include Fabrica de Arte Janeiro with her father and two sisters, and she Vienna; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Reykjavik for his lyrical work Beaivi, áhčážan (The Sun, My Westerkamp, Barry Truax, Howard Broomfield, Cubano; ESMOA, California; Das Esszimmer went on to study law. With her husband, who Art Museum, Iceland; Museum of Contemporary Father). Peter Huse and Bruce Davis. Their recordings Raum für Kunst, Bonn; Robert Mann Gallery, worked for the foreign service, she lived in Italy, Art, Tokyo; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, ; 12th were composed first of local tapes recorded in New York; Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francis- Switzerland, England, and the United States, Biennale de Lyon; and the Venice Biennale. Char- Vancouver, then in villages across Europe and co; PuNcTuM Espacio, Mexico City, as well as until they separated and she returned to Rio in rière was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel Award / Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) career spanned on a tour across Canada. Over the decades, the the Fototeca de Cuba, Havana. He is represented 1959; she died there in 1977. Since her death, Cla- Swiss Art Award in both 2013 and 2015. In 2018, fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. catalogue of recordings continued to increase, in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas rice Lispector has earned universal recognition he won the GASAG prize at the Berlinischer In the sixties she influenced American music including returning to the same sites to measure Artes, Cuba among other collections. as Brazil’s greatest modern writer. Galerie. profoundly through her work with improvisation, the difference in the soundscapes due to human meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. development. She founded "Deep Listening“ as a way of listen- Alvin Lucier has pioneered in many areas of Cyprien Gaillard studied in Lausanne and Jumana Manna is a Palestinian artist whose ing in every possible way to everything possi- music composition and performance, including lives and works in Berlin. He has been the recip- work shifts between sculpture and film, body and ble, to hear no matter what you are doing. She the notation of performers' physical gestures, the ient of a number of awards, including Melbourne land, narrative and form. Her practice explores was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates use of brain waves in live performance, the gen- International Film Festival Award for Best how power is articulated through relationships, and among her many awards was the William eration of visual imagery by sound in vibrating Experimental Short and the Preis der National- often focusing on the body and materiality in Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Co- media, and the evocation of room acoustics for galerie für junge Kunst. Solo exhibitions include: relation to narratives of nationalism and histories lumbia University, New York. musical purposes. From 1968 to 2011, he taught at MoMA PS1; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; of place. Manna is a graduate of CalArts, Valen- Wesleyan University, where he was John Spen- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; KW Institute cia and Oslo National Academy of the Arts. cer Camp Professor of Music. Alvin Lucier was for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and Tate Modern, awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the London. Major group shows include the Venice Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United Biennial; Biennale de Lyon; Gwangju Biennial; Katarzyna Badach was born in Gdansk, Po- States, and received an Honorary Doctorate of and the Berlin Biennale. land in 1975. Badach works predominantly in the Arts from the University of Plymouth, England. medium of painting. She completed the Acad- emy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany with Dark Morph is the project name for Jónsi Bir- distinction as Meisterschülerin of Prof. Helmut Apitchatpong Weerasethakul lives and gisson and Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s work, Dorner in 2001. Her work has been presented works in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Working in the developed between 2018 and 2019, as an attempt internationally. Recent exhibitions include Until space between cinema and contemporary art, to collaborate with inhabitants, environments we grow wings at Galerie Raskolnikow, Dresden; Apichatpong Weerasethakul creates installa- and activists concerned about catastrophic pollu- Caída Libre at Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes tions, videos, short and feature films that are tion and the destruction of the oceanic world. Visuales, Havana; Cubanscapes at Christa Burger often non-linear and transmit a strong sense of The name Dark Morph is taken from a type of Gallery, München; and Compositions, Horst dislocation and otherworldliness. Through the Fijian heron. Dark Morph is in collaboration with Merkle Gallery, Stuttgart. She is represented manipulation of time and light, Weerasethakul TBA21-Academy. The duo’s first album pre- in the collections of the Deutsche Bank, Com- constructs tenuous bridges for the viewer to miered live at Ocean Space, an installation at the merzbank and Regierungspräsidium Karlsruhe, travel between the real and the mythical, the in- Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, May 2019. among others. She lives and works in Havana, dividual and the collective, the corporeal and the Cuba and Berlin, Germany. chimeric. His art projects and feature films have won him widespread recognition and numerous Drexciya (1992-2002), a duo based in Detroit, festival prizes, including three from the Cannes became one of the most celebrated and influ- Film Festival. ential names in American experimental techno. One of the few groups to use techno as a political tool in effecting criticism of racial inequity and Aryo Danusiri is a video artist and anthro- inner-city recovery, Drexciya brought a wider pologist. His works have been exploring the social and aesthetic agenda to a style in which mobilities of keywords, violence, and memory in allegiance to the beat is typically the only prereq- reconfiguring the political and social landscape uisite. Closely associated with the label Under- of post-authoritarian Indonesian in 1998. Those ground Resistance, and operating in the classical- works have been exhibited both in theater and ly covert tradition of “faceless” techno (the pair’s gallery settings including (selected) Yamagata identities remain a mystery), the music found New Asia Current HKW Berlin; Camera Austria; release through such internationally renowned Ethnographic Terminalia, Toronto; Mead Festival labels as Warp, Rephlex, Tresor and Clone. NYC and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. At present, he is completing his Ph.D. in the Social Anthro- pology program and Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University.

Brandon Poole is a Master of Visual Studies candidate (2020) at the University of Toronto. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria. He was shortlisted for both the 2016 and 2017 Presentation House Gal- lery’s Phil B. Lind Emerging Artist prize. and is a recent recipient of a Social Science and Human- ities Research Council (SSHRC) grant. Toronto Biennial of art