An all-day event that gathers key figures within environmental thinking to address pressing questions and help set the agenda for the Infinite Ecologies Marathon in July 2024.
This event is a prelude to an upcoming festival in July 2024 – the Infinite Ecologies Marathon, which marks the ten-year anniversary of the 2014 Extinction Marathon. Both Infinite Ecologies gatherings seek agency in current times, focusing on what must be witnessed, remembered and held in facing a climate breakdown which is unequally distributed between persons, human and non-human alike.
Infinite Ecologies Marathon: The Prelude brings together key figures across disciplines – including Marina Abramović, Anohni*, James Bridle*, Cooking Sections, Gabriela De Matos, Manthia Diawara, Brian Eno*, Fiscal Harm, Formafantasma*, Lina Ghotmeh, Daisy Hildyard, Louisa Hooper, Nabihah Iqbal, Judy Ling Wong, Gabriel Massan, Mariana Mazzucato, Jojo Mehta, Kumi Naidoo*, Ventura Profana with Vandria Garcia Corrêa and Ta’Wa Melke, Tomás Saraceno, Nikolaj Schultz, Yinka Shonibare, Natsuko Uchino, Adrián Villar Rojas and Johannes Vogel – to respond to the prompts:
What is underrepresented on the environmental agenda today?
What is not yet on the agenda, but will be in the near future?
*denotes remote or online contribution
Interventions at The Prelude will set the agenda for the July 2024 Marathon, and for Serpentine’s actions in the lead-up to it. The Infinite Ecologies Marathon inaugurates Serpentine’s Ecologies initiatives for 2024-2026 and builds on Serpentine’s longstanding commitment to artist-led, systems-focused ecological research and initiatives, from the Extinction Marathon (2014) to the General Ecology project (since 2018) and Back to Earth (2020-2022).
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director; Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Ecologies; and Kostas Stasinopoulos, Curator, Live Programmes; with Sarah Hamed, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions and Eva Speight, Curatorial Assistant, Live Programmes.
PROGRAMME
Please note that due to the nature of the event, timings are subject to change on the day and without warning.
*Denotes remote contribution
Saturday 14 October 2023
12 – 2pm
Bettina Korek & Hans Ulrich Obrist, Introductions
Lina Ghotmeh, What remains Invisible – Bacteria –
Marina Abramović in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws
Johannes Vogel, What is underrepresented on the environmental agenda today? What is not yet on the agenda, but will be in the near future?
Tomás Saraceno with Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Victoria Ivanova, Cloud Cities
*Brian Eno, 364 More Earth Days
2 – 4pm
Mariana Mazzucato, A mission-oriented approach to climate change
Manthia Diawara, Aliou Diouf: A Just World For Everyone and the Environment, in conversation with Kostas Stasinopoulos
Lucia Pietroiusti, Infinite Ecologies
Cooking Sections, FOOD CHANGING CLIMATE CHANGES FOOD
Judy Ling Wong, Re-imagining green jobs as a creative route to a necessary green future; or, A vision of green jobs for a necessary green future
Daisy Hildyard, WASTE
4 – 6pm
Louisa Hooper in conversation with Lucia Pietroiusti
*Kumi Naidoo, Infinite Ecologies Marathon
Jojo Mehta, Protecting nature through criminal law: “ECOCIDE” – victims, voices, values
Gabriela De Matos, other world constructions
Yinka Shonibare, Food Security and Climate Change in Africa, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Nikolaj Schultz, On the Many Ways of ‘Becoming Sensible’ in the Anthropocene; or: A New Existentialism?
6 – 8.30pm
*Anohni in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
*James Bridle, Στο βουνό / To The Mountain (2023)
Adrián Villar Rojas, The End of Imagination
Natsuko Uchino, vernacular crafts, places and matter
Nabihah Iqbal accompanied by Fiscal Harm, SCAVENGERS
Ventura Profana, we found a song in the ocean that emanates the firm scent of a relieving memory: the earth is not captive to humanity. Joined by Vandria Garcia Correa and Ta’Wa Melke.
Additional online contribution by *Formafantasma (Simone Farresin & Andrea Trimarchi)
FURTHER INFORMATION
In 2014, Serpentine hosted the two-day Extinction Marathon that brought artists, writers, scientists, and theorists together to explore how the spectre of extinction now influences all our understandings of being in the world. Since then, Serpentine has continued to support environmentally just and balanced futures.
In July 2024, the ten-year anniversary of the Extinction Marathon, the Infinite Ecologies Marathon takes place as a mid-summer festival across the entire Serpentine campus, including The Magazine restaurant and the Serpentine Pavilion 2024. This Marathon convenes participants across the arts, sciences, activism, and humanities. Concerned with the multiplicity and interdependencies of life-forms that constitute this Earth, the Infinite Ecologies Marathon proposes practical actions, stories, imaginaries, futures, and cosmologies rooted in the principles of environmental interconnection, attunement and responsibility. The Infinite Ecologies Marathon points to interconnected abundance and sensual complexity, while acknowledging the vastly different lived realities of climate breakdown.
Culture builds purpose: it does so in many ways – in making space for the sacred, the radical and the dissonant in an increasingly alienated, dominant culture; proposing alternative ways of living and imagining life; carrying knowledge and learning across deep time; and participating in redesigning broken systems. As speculative and poetic as it is practical, the Infinite Ecologies Marathon is also concerned with the roles culture and art can play towards environmental justice and balance, from messaging and advocacy, to building reparative infrastructures, and contributing to systems change. To that end, the Infinite Ecologies Marathon will also be a platform for the promotion and discussion of reparative, just and transformative environmental and climate actions at multiple scales.
