CHUS MARTÍNEZ & INGO NIERMANN. A SESSION ON LOVE, OCEANS AND THE EMERGENCE OF AFFECTIVE POLITICAL THOUGHT

Venue: Centro Municipal San Francisco. Plaza Corazón de María s/n, 48003-Bilbao

A Session on Love, Oceans and the Emergence of Affective Political Thought is part of the conference Young People, Well-Being, Resilience and Enterprise: Critical Perspectives for the Anthropocene. The conference takes place at the Bizkaia Aretoa (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU) and different venues around the city of Bilbao.

 A Session on Love, Oceans and the Emergence of Affective Political Thought
It seems excessive to think of an animal that decides to negate its instinct and abandons hunting other animals or even humans … even so the idea fascinates me. I imagine that lion in the jungle, at ease, thoughtful, leaving behind, without a nostalgic hint, his time as ferocious predator.
I fantasize about the conversations he has with the lionesses (who were really the true hunters) and lions about the struggles of the past, the life battles that an accurate bite stopped at once. Ah! Now the rejoicing is another, hours of conversation with the gazelles … what a world of theirs …

Let us now think of another concept of “climate change.” This seems to be a change and thus the notion adds –almost positively– to a whole chain of other cultural changes, to all the changes that inevitably new times bring … The media and the socio-political discourses use the term continuously without a note on its euphemistic character and how it denies the radical transformation that human activity imposes on the natural environment, on life.

So, in this session we will be connecting the extensive thinking of contemporary artists on nature, with the literary and filmic project of Ingo Niermann dedicated to offer fiction as the most suitable substance for a new thinking on care, a new social function of love. Artistic practice should be seen as the legitimate terrain for the forming of new theories, practices and behaviors able to influence the way we act.

Chus Martínez (Ponteceso, A Coruña) lives and works in Basel. She is the Head of the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, Switzerland. From 2018 till 2020, she will be the expedition leader of The Current, a project initiated by the TBA21 Academy. She has been the Chief Curator at El Museo Del Barrio, New York. She was dOCUMENTA (13) Head of Department, and Member of Core Agent Group. Previously she was Chief Curator at MACBA, Barcelona (2008 to 2011), Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005–08) and Artistic Director of Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2002–05).

Ingo Niermann (Bielefeld, Germany) lives and works in Basel. He is a writer and the editor of the speculative book series Solution at Sternberg Press. His debut novel Der Effekt was published in 2001. Based on his novel Solution 257: Complete Love (2016), Niermann initiated The Army of Love. His most recent book, co-edited with Joshua Simon, is Solution 275-294: Communists Anonymous (2017).