In the series HMKV Video of the Month, HMKV presents in monthly rotation current video works by international artists – selected by Inke Arns.
DISNOVATION.ORG: Life Support System
HMKV Video of the Month
01–31 August 2021
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES ESTIMATION EXPERIMENT
This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes.
It is common to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere with metaphors from economics, which has specific understandings of value. Today’s prevailing economics conventions are unable to recognize intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contributions to life on Earth.
This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions, and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over-exploited “work of the biosphere.”
CREDITS
Conception: DISNOVATION.ORG & Baruch Gottlieb
3D video design: Jules Barton
Voice over: Baruch Gottlieb
Production: STRP, iMAL, Biennale Chroniques
Life Support System is part of the project POST GROWTH PROTOTYPES which can be viewed at http://disnovation.org/pgp.php
BIO
Founded in 2012 DISNOVATION.ORG is both an art collective and an international workgroup engaged in the crossovers between contemporary arts, research and hacking. They develop situations of interference, discussion and speculation that question dominant techno-positivist ideologies in order to foster post-growth narratives. Their research is expressed through installations, performances, websites and events. They recently co-edited A Bestiary of the Anthropocene, an atlas of anthropic hybrid creatures, and The Pirate Book, an anthology about media piracy. The collective is currently composed of Nicolas Maigret, Maria Roszkowska & Baruch Gottlieb.
Their work has been presented at numerous art centers and festivals internationally such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Transmediale (Berlin), the Museum of Art and Design (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), FILE (Sao Paulo), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Strelka Institute (Moscow), ISEA (Hong Kong), Elektra (Montréal), China Museum of Digital Arts (Beijing), and the Chaos Computer Congress (Hamburg)… Their work has been featured in Forbes, Vice, Wired, Motherboard, Libération, Die Zeit, Arte TV, Next Nature, Hyperallergic, Le Temps, Neural.it, Digicult, Gizmodo, Seattle Weekly, torrentfreak.com, and Filmmaker Magazine among others.