Over 100 contributors mark seven years of Serpentine Ecologies’ research into non-human consciousness with The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish—a landmark publication exploring the minds of animals, plants, fungi, and machines.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is a major publication gathering work from over 100 contributors in the arts, humanities, and sciences. This collection, edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos, explores animal, plant, fungal, and machine consciousness; interspecies communication; and more-than-human perspectives. Marking a significant milestone in Serpentine’s long-term research project of the same name—initiated in 2018—the publication brings together years of inquiry into non-human ways of knowing and being. The publication includes original conversations, essays, interviews, meditations, poems and artworks from a wide range of leading thinkers across disciplines, including Peter Gabriel, Anna L. Tsing, Tim Ingold, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Merlin Sheldrake, Superflex, Jenna Sutela, Karrabing Film Collective, Sophia Al-Maria, Ted Chiang and many others.
The publication is arranged into five thematic chapters—Worlds, Beings, Grounds, Odes, and Oracles—tracing planetary consciousness through methods, beings, politics, storytelling, and technology.
Book launches will take place on 27th October 2025 at the Royal College of Art, London and on 14th September 2025 as part of Earthrising Festival at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
The first book launch took place at E-WERK Luckenwalde, Germany, on the 31st May 2025, as part of the festival’s sixth iteration, Love and Lament, presented by Schering Stiftung, Berlin. The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: Love and Lament programme focused on intimacy and grief across species and beings, featuring talks, screenings, readings and performances by Claudia Rankine, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Jenna Sutela and many more. Click here for more information.
Published by Hatje Cantz and available via the Serpentine website.
A London launch of the publication is scheduled for September 2025.
As part of his long-term project, The Art Direction of the Noguchi Museum (2018-ongoing), artist Giles Round has been in residence with Serpentine’s General Ecology project. This included the art direction of every edition of The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, inclusive of a suite of graphic identities developed with marbling techniques, as well as low-impact spatial design elements, including the light design for The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants at EartH Hackney; a graphic suite of wayfinding panels for The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: we have never been one at Ambika P3, Marylebone, as well as the graphic design of the project’s publication.
Andrew Adamatzky Yussef Agbo-Ola/Olaniyi Studio; Sophia Al-Maria; Allora & Calzadilla; Saelia Aparicio; Chloe Aridjis; Heather Barnett; Antoine Bertin; Lynne Boddy; Elizabeth-Jane Burnett Vivian Caccuri; Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela; Federico Campagna; Teresa Castro; Alex Cecchetti; Vint Cerf; Ted Chiang; Sean Cho A.; Nicola Clayton; Emanuele Coccia; Revital Cohen; & Tuur Van Balen; The Coven Intelligence Program; Marisol de la Cadena; Michela de Mattei; Onome Ekeh; Cru Encarnação; James Fairhead; Adham Faramawy; Simone Forti; Claire Filmon; Rosalind Fowler; Peter Gabriel; Elaine Gan; Jay Gao; Sabine Hauert; Daisy Hildyard; Amy Hollywood; Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser); Tim Ingold; Derek Jarman; Alex Jordan; Karrabing Film Collective; Leah Kelly; Asim Khan; Kapwani Kiwanga; Dominique Knowles; Bettina Korek; Simone Kotva; Daisy Lafarge; Hannah Landecker; Yasmeen Lari; Long Litt Woon; Annea Lockwood; Thandi Loewenson; Miranda Lowe; Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe; Marcos Lutyens; Carlos Magdalena; Michael Marder; Alex McBratney; Natasha Myers; Nahum; Rasmus Nielsen/ SUPERFLEX; Hatis Noit; Hans Ulrich Obrist; Angelica Patterson; Lucia Pietroiusti; Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Maria Puig de la Bellacasa; Filipa Ramos; Asad Raza; Diana Reiss; Tabita Rezaire; Ben Rivers; Giles Round; Merlin Sheldrake; Kostas Stasinopoulos; Jenna Sutela; bones tan jones; Phoebe Tickell; Anaïs Tondeur & Germain Meulemans; Laurence Totelin; Anna L. Tsing; Oula A. Valkeapäa & Leena Valkeapäa; Sumayya Vally; Kim Walker; Chris Watson; Elvia Wilk; Rain Wu & Mariana Sanchez Salvador
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish began in 2018 as a multi-year symposium, podcast and research project investigating consciousness and intelligence across species and beings. First launched at the ZSL London Zoo, the series has since welcomed over 10,000 participants and has become a pioneering force in ecological and environmental discourse—helping to shape how the arts and culture engage with more-than-human worlds.
– 2018 at the London Zoo: Part 1: Language: On interspecies communications, with Ted Chiang, Vint Cerf, Peter Gabriel and more
– 2018 at Ambika P3: we have never been one: On Gaia theory and micro-organisms, with Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Sophia Al-Maria, , University of Westminster
– 2019 at EartH Hackney: with plants: on plant consciousness, plant intelligence and communication with the vegetal world, with Tabita Rezaire, Chris Watson and moreH 11-17, Stoke Newington Road
– 2020 online: the understory of the understory: on land, earth, soil, fungi, with Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Merlin Sheldrake and more. This event marked the launch of Sheldrake’s landmark publication, Entangled Life. at themind.fish
– 2022, presented in collaboration with Galeria Municipal do Porto at the Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto, Portugal: The Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish: on dreams in the non-human world, with Alex Jordan, Onome Ekeh, Federico Campagna and more.
Editor Bios
Filipa Ramos, PhD, is a Lisbon-born writer and curator whose research investigates art’s relationship to ecology. She is Lecturer at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, and Artistic Director of Loop, a Festival dedicated to artist’s films, spread out across the cultural and artistic venues of Barcelona. Ramos curated BESTIARI, the Catalan representation at the 60th Biennale di Venezia (2024). She co-founded the online artists’ cinema Vdrome. She runs the art and science festival The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Lucia Pietroiusti, with whom she also curated Songs for the Changing Seasons for the 1. Klima Biennale Wien (2024) and Persones Persons for the 8th Biennale Gherdëina, 2022. In 2021, she co-curated Bodies of Water, the 13th Shanghai Biennale. Ramos was Editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism (2013–20), Associated Editor of Manifesta Journal (2009–11) and contributed to Documenta 13 (2012) and 14 (2017). She edited Animals (Whitechapel Gallery/ MIT Press, 2016). Her upcoming book, The Artist as Ecologist (Lund Humphreys, 2025), discusses the ways in which contemporary artists embrace environmentalism.
Lucia Pietroiusti is a curator, programmer and strategist, working at the intersection of art, ecology and systems. As Head of Ecologies at Serpentine, London, Pietroiusti founded General Ecology in 2018 and the Ecologies department in 2023, to further ecological research and experimentation in thought, infrastructure and practice. Pietroiusti is the curator of Sun & Sea (Golden Lion at the 58th Venice Biennale and tour). With Filipa Ramos, she is the curator of Songs for the Changing Seasons (Vienna Klima Biennale, 2024) and Persones Persons (8th Biennale Gherdeïna, 2022). Pietroiusti is a curator of Sites of… Practice (E-WERK Luckenwalde, since 2024), Back to Earth (Serpentine, 2020-22) and Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The British East India Company on Trial by Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal (2025). Recent publications include More-than-Human (with Andrés Jaque and Marina Otero Verzier) and The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (with Filipa Ramos).
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: Love and Lament (31st May 2025, E-WERK Luckenwalde) is curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos. The publication is edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos and published by Hatje Cantz.
