The performative lecture Anatomy of an Interconnected System (2017) focuses at the human-(N)ature complex in the frame of the emergent environmental crisis. It does so by looking at how Western understanding of such complex is traceable in the spatial construction of classical and contemporary artworks. This piece is structured in a lecture and a participative performance which frame the discourse in a historical-philosophical perspective. Finally, participants engage in an intense bodily experience featuring ancestral materials such earth, soil, and bones, reflecting body and space.

Today, humans can design, control and engineer organisms in unprecedented ways though biotechnology – in other words, human agency on evolution can happen in times and scales unseen before. How does this affect the way humans understand ecosystems? Are ecosystems and organisms machineries that can be improved, a complex that can be controlled, or an interconnected system with leaky holes and uncertain areas? The double register of Anatomy of an Interconnected System elaborates on concepts from the history of art and philosophy to tackle the mentioned questions and a bodily, participative session.

Morphology
Performative lecture
Media: animal bones, blackboard, chalk, soil, cotton cloth, animal blood, caput mortum pigment
Duration: 1h 20′
Commissioned by Art Laboratory Berlin with the support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Credits
Margherita Pevere: concept, realization, performance
Commissioned by Art Laboratory Berlin with the support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Photography: Tim Deussen, Cecilia Vilca, Hege Tapio