« Field Study, Performances and Exhibition 2014/15 | deutsch
BUZZ
PARASITIC MEDIA INTERVENTIONS
The artistic research BUZZ is divided into two phases; in August 2014 an artistic research laboratory was established in the Indian Institute of Science, IISc Bangalore. The lab explored issues relating to embodiment theories, observation practices of social insects and entanglements of human and animal societies at the example of the South Indian wasp Ropalidia marginata.
In a second phase the work results from India will be discussed on the ethnographic film festival in Freiburg/Germany. BUZZ focusses on the practices of knowledge building in different contextes. The concept of the parasite and its use in different research strategies is used to explore the field.
- Exhibition May 8-22, 2015 at T66 art gallery, Freiburg
- Talk on February 03, 2015 at Freiburg University
- Lecture Performance on August 25, 2014 in the CCS Seminar Hall, IISc Bangalore
- August 26-27: workshop with artists, biologists and computer scientists at the old vespiary
The project encompasses many disciplines and is an artistic collaboration between the mbody research group, Offenburg University, Freiburg University, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bagalore, the Freiburg Filmforum, and Freiburg’s Galerie T66. A subproject of Participatory Mediographies | internal
»You are looking at us like insects.« Ousmane Sembene to Jean Rouch (1965)
1. Parasitic Intervention
BUZZ is a participatory mediography about research practices at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore/India. The intervention consideres itself as a parasitic metamorphosis, in which knowledge production takes place and new epistemes occur.
The parasite is not the only metaphor in the approach, but an important principle that is creating an anchor for the artistic and epistemologic intervention. The parasitic is seen as a living concept that helps to understand dimensions like exchange, existence, life, science, thinking and art: as the exchange between two beings can be seen as parasitic - mutualistic, symbiotic or/and parasitic - and maybe both sides follow the same strategy. * Time Schedule
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»Stations and paths together form a system. Points and line, beings and relations.«Michel Serres |
So the term needs another understanding to look beyond a narrow meaning. The scientific definition is a strategically limited one that did not manage to suggest the seamless transition between parasitism, mutualism and symbiosis. The project member Vasanthi Mariadass from Srishti School/Bangalore draws a line to the logic of the perhaps:
BUZZ follows the buzzy movements of a wasp flight through the field. It turns off in unforeseen directions and abruptly lands in decisive moments - a pattern which follows the logic of permanent deterretorialisation and reterretorialisation. Like the ancient Greek παρά (para = beside; next to, near, from; against, contrary to) fits to the concept of the psychogeographic/situationist dérive, BUZZ is not mainly following the logic of knowing in the scientific sphere, but its also not beyond any knowing. It is the sphere of being affected and infected.
The parasite is not a mere metaphor, but its "real". By reading this text the reader already got infected and begins to fight/collaborate with it. It already spread its larvae. The ontogenesis of BUZZ is roughly divided into two phases:
PHASE I - BUZZ lodges at the IISc / Bangalore
August 11-29, 2014
Establishment of an artistic-philosophical lab as a collective black box (Serres) at the at the IISc. The old vespiary of the Centre For Ecological Sciences was transformed to a temporary host of BUZZ. Different formats like Skype performances, screenings, readings, scientific experiments discussions and foraies created an interface in which epistemes (e.g. concepts, practices) were going on. Honking city insects, ectoparasites, tropical rain and crickets accompanied this parasitic process.
PARASITIC TALK Jan Friedrich Kurth alias Giovanni Battista Grassi with Sharath Chandra Ram about Plasmodium and Malaria |
PHASE II - BUZZ lodges at T66 Art Gallery Freiburg/Germany
May 08-22, 2015
After several months of incubation BUZZ lays some of its work results in the T66 gallery space at Freiburg/Germany and discusses them at the ethnographic film festival (see 5).
»We are in the noises of the world. It is outside - it is the world itself - and it is inside, produced by our living body. We cannot close our door to their reception, and we evolve, rolling in this incalculable swell. (...) The organism - my body - is now an exchanger of time, penetrated by signals, noises and parasites.« Michel Serres (2002)
Rivers flow in one direction, and never in the other. If a uni-directional relationship takes the place of exchange, the parasitic begins - as the French philosopher Michel Serres (1987) says. »Le parasite« in French has also the meaning of noise and interference.
2. Theory
a. The wasp from Fabre to Bergson, Uexküll and Deleuze
The French entomologist Henri Fabre is distiguishing instinct and intellect using the example of the hunting wasp Ammophilia. Instinct according to Fabre remains unchanged for thousands of years, a mechanical and self-regulative surface mode of understanding. Intelligence, however, appears as a feature of human superiority. Thereby he argues against the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin.
Jean-Henri Fabre at work |
»I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.« Charles Darwin |
When the philosopher Henri Bergson visits Fabre in 1910 he turns this relationship around. For him, intelligence is a limited form of understanding, which remains cold and externally. The instinct, however, is a deeper understanding, which shows us the »true meaning of life.« The instinct allows the wasp a deep empathy with the body of their prey in order to paralyze it with nine aimed punches and keep it as living storage reservoir for its own larvae. Bergson: »Her dramas owe nothing of external perception, but it results from the joint presence of ammophila and the caterpillar larvae. They can no longer be considered as two separate organisms, but as two modes of action.«
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»If I were a wasp I would have to be as intellectual as I am as a human being and not any less.«Raghavendra Gadagkar Entomologist and Head of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc |
Through Bergson and Uexküll the wasp observations from Fabre condensate in the thinking of Deleuze/Guattari in the figure of becoming animal. Wasp and orchid, which pass partly into each other at the moment of contact and thereby form the mutual and hybridized wasp-orchid. This can be considered as a specific form of parasitism.
»The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless derretorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome.«
Deleuze/Guattari, Thousand Plateaus
»A bee cannot be a lizard; it cannot even be a wasp. Nor can it simultaneously belong to two species; it can only be itself, within the limits set it by Nature. |
»No, we know nothing of the "we" except for what we think we know of the ego, body and soul. Great beast, mystical body, Leviathan, biological models. In sum, we know nothing, and once more, the collective is black and makes noise.« |
b. Parasitic practices in science and art
Parasitic conditions are not only in biology, but also in science and art. Basic forms of empirical research can be understood as parasitic practices based on a variety of scheduled observations and systematic experimentations. The observation of social insects is parasitic, since the observed species - as deconstructed by Jacques Derrida - seems not to respond, but to react.
Parasitic relationships also exist in the arts. What Hal Foster (1996) described as the Ethnographic Turn is, by this reckoning, experiencing an enormous acceleration through the digitalisation and globalisation of the production of art. Artistic intervention projects have turned into their own aesthetic format, and artists in residence travel around the world on the »parasitic« lookout for visual booty for galleries and art markets at home. In essence, art tourism resembles medical and military operations: Quick in, quick look, quick out. This describes also the strategy of BUZZ as an artistic parasite.
Epistemologically for both art and science there is the same question: are parasites the basic element of a knowledge system or its pathology? Who or what parasitized whom? BUZZ parasitizes the IISc to mutate as artistic research itself as a serious form of knowledge production. Therefore the parasite nests in the centre of the system in a vespiary to wreak changes there and disrupt.
According to Serres parasitism is equal to some sort of noise production - noise in the form of performances as for instance interviews with fictional historical entomologists.
The researchers observe the insects, the artists observe the researchers, the film students watch the artists and the biological students observing ants and wasps. All these lines of sights can suddenly change their directions. Computer scientists participate by adding algorithmical layers to these processes. They insert the logic of Anternet and Parasitic Computing to the project.
After three weeks BUZZ leaves from IISc and lays its eggs after several months of incubation in Freiburg's Gallery T66.
c. Parasitic practices in social media
In the beginning was the noise. In contrast to the information theory of Claude Shannon for Michel Serres disorder is dominating any relationship. Not the ratio transmitter/receiver is in the foreground, but the one of communication/noise. The interface of body and collective forms a parasitic braid in which phenomena and episteme are hooked. These meshes are not really conceivable without noise, without interference and without parasites. The interface is understood as the organic animal principle of a medial-parasitic entanglement.
Post-Snowden media naturally has to be considered as co-evolutionary and parasitic. Pull-Technology is a hungry creature which is devouring its hosts - with the apps living as ectoparasitic on and beneath our skin. Only occasionally they are annoying their host. The boundary between symbiotic and parasitic media relations is fluent. In any case, it is of animal quality.
»There are channels, and thus there must be noise. No canal without noise. The real is not rational. (…) The ant is at home, is rational and works. It works by chasing out disorder. We can guess our horizon, the point of entry into the shadows of the perfect anthill, crumbling into animal rationalism. « Michel Serres
3. Ethnographic Observation on five levels
BUZZ will also document the relationship of the scientists with their insects. It is focusing on knowledge production and on current embodiment theories like enactivism, extended mind and embeddedness - in laboratories and in the field. This setting is exploring the intertwined collective strategies between observer and the observed from the following point of views:
- the artists and filmers
- the collaborative scientists including students and practitioners in the field
- the social insects as well as
- computer scientists
The BUZZ project layers and blends two parasitic forms: scientific and artistic relationships which allows the practice of the following five levels of “observations of observations (Luhmann):
- The humming of the material. EVERYTHING is a film/worth to be filmed. What jumps at me parasitises me. Film everything!
- What jumps at the researchers and students: Processes of re- and deterritorialisation experienced by researchers and students by the action of the insects, how processes occur, and alternating “occupation (Freud). Filming the students, researchers and their insects
- How the researchers and students research themselves, their own research, and the effect of becoming parasitised/a parasite themselves. How do they change as a result of their own research? Filming teaching sessions, discussions, and filming the laboratory
- Researching the interaction with and amongst us, and our own sense of being “occupied or “afflicted” by others and by the research group. Filming our interventions, discussions and processes
- Reduction and complexity as regards the artistic processes. Filming the artistic installations, performances and reflection.
Each of these five levels contribute to the art process and form a social sculpture (Beuys).
The aims sketched out in this project intend to lead to a somehow participatory techno-eto-ethnographic process of observations and encounters. Human and non-human forms of communication and sensory production will epitomise these interactions, and be the basis of inquiry. In these forms, life itself and the Other enter into an exchange in a process of mutual reference, where they are embedded in varied environments and appear in different or similar modes of embodiment. To be embedded means to be tangible to the senses through a range of artistic, technical and philosophical approaches, in which man, beast, thing and medium participate and are able to develop mutually.
»We live in that black box called the collective; we live by it, on it, and in it. It so happens that this collective was given the form of an animal. We are certainly within something bestial; in more distinguished terms, we are speaking of an organic model for the members of a society. Our host?« Michel Serres
The following concepts are at the heart of the BUZZ project:
- Environment, embeddedness, extended mind, embodiment, enactivism
- Emergence, participation, collective intelligence, super organism
- Knowledge- and academic culture at the IICc (Latour 2002), (discipliniarity and transdiscipliniarity)
- Bi- and unidirectional methods in science, practices and ethnographic observation
- Processes of reduction, structuring, signalling and (de)territorialisation as well as complexity, association/overlap and reterritorialisation in terms of transdisciplinarity, ethnography, life and computer science and art, and their mutual influence on each other
4. Interactive Documentary (idoc)
Knowledge about how parasitic relationships overlap and continue to wrap around each other is emergent, and increasingly finds representation in hypermedia technologies. Just as one YouTube link leads to another, the knowledge society generates manifold montages in its biographies, blogs and the relationships it discloses. And just as knowledge and transformations in the process of overlapping emerge, so do they also find expression in non-linear narrative formats (Gaudenzi 2013).
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Females of the parasitoid wasp Neoneurus vesculus ovipositing in workers of the ant Formica cuniculariaPHASE II Parasitic wasps emerging from cercopode larvae alien style |
German and Indian students documented the BUZZ intervention interculturally. The results will be compiled in an interactive video documentary during a project seminar at Offenburg University in Winter 2014/15.
5. Discourse und Exhibition Mai 2015
Parallel to the ethnogaphic Freiburg Filmforum (May 13th – 15th 2015), an experimental artistic exposition in the galleries of T66 will take place. On the lower level of the tower-like building an insect laboratory with ants and bees will be set up. The upper level will invite academics and other visitors to video screenings, readings, performance art and discussions. A network connection between the two floors of the T66 building and Bangalore will create a multitude of sensory connections.
Daniel Fetzner and Martin Dornberg would like there to initiate a discussion about other species and processes of parasitic estrangement with members of their mbody research group, Filmforum guests, students and other visitors. The view of human participants is intended to link them by means of artistic interaction with social insects and thereby lead to encounters with the foreign.
6. Participants and Preparatory Work
BUZZ is a transdiziplinary and artistic cooperation between the research group mbody, Offenburg University, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bagalore, Freiburg University, the Freiburg Filmforum, and Freiburg’s Galerie T66.
Concept and Artistic Research
- Daniel Fetzner (*1966) Media Artist and Architect, 2002 Professor for Digital Media at Furtwangen University, 2009-2011 Head of Media Design Department at the German University Cairo. 2014 Professor for artistic research at Offenburg University.
- Martin Dornberg (*1959) Dr. med. Dr. phil., Psychosomatiker und Philosoph, seit 1998 Lehrbeauftragter für Philosophie an der Universität Freiburg, Leiter des Zentrums für Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie im Ärztehaus am St. Josefskrankenhaus Freiburg
Participants India
- Raghavendra Gadagkar (Indian Institute of Science)
- Vasanthi Mariadass, Sharath Chandra Ram, Aileen Blaney, Students (Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology)
- Daniel Fetzner, Bernadette Tshiang Tshiananga, Benjamin Schnitzer (Hochschule Offenburg)
- Martin Dornberg, Victoria Vonau (Universität Freiburg)
- Ephraim Wegner, Harald Kimmig (mbody), Jan F. Kurth, Georg Hobmeier u.a.
Partners
- Marion Mangelsdorf - Sociologist at Zentrum für Anthropologie und Gender Studies Freiburg University
- Martin Kraus - Curator T66
- Neriman Bayram - Curator Filmforum Freiburg
- Sebastian Finckh - Architect TERM
Preparatory Work (selection)
- Forschungsaufenthalt von Daniel Fetzner am Indian Institute of Science 2012
- Interkulturelle Projektkooperation von Daniel Fetzner und Marion Mangelsdorf im Rahmen des DAAD-Austauschs »Cross Cultural Media« zu deutsch-ägyptischen Ethnographien politischer Transformationsprozesse in Kairo (Sommer 2013) http://www.metaspace.de/Dokumentation/Ccm
- Philosophische Seminare »Tierphilosophie« (J. Derrida) und »Gemeinschaft« (J.L. Nancy) von Martin Dornberg an der Universität Freiburg (Winter 2013/14/Sommer 2014)
- Forschungsantrag und Workshop »Partizipative Mediografien« von Daniel Fetzner, Marion Mangelsdorf und Martin Dornberg
- Seminar »Partizipative Mediografien« zur Beobachtung von Mensch-/Tierbeziehungen unter Leitung von Daniel Fetzner an der Hochschule Offenburg und Marion Mangelsdorf an der Universität Freiburg (Sommer 2014)
References
- Bateson, Gregroy (1982) Geist und Natur: Eine notwendige Einheit. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp
- Deleuze, Gilles//Guattari, Felix (1987) Thousand-Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
- Derrida, Jaques (1995): Die Signatur aushölen. Eine Theorie des Parasiten.
- Dotzler, Bernhard/Schmidgen, Henning (2008): Parasiten und Sirenen. Bielefeld: Transcript
- Fetzner/Mangelsdorf, Dornberg/Ruf (2014): Partizipative Mediografien - research proposal
- Fetzner, Daniel (2012): Notes on Insects and Rhythms
- Foster, Hal (1996) The Artist as Ethnographer
- Gadagkar, Raghavendra (2010) What can we learn from insect societies? In: Nature and Culture (Eds.) R.Narasimha and S.Menon), Centre for Studies in Civilizations (CSC) and Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHSPC), Volume XIV, Part 1, New Delhi, pp.357-365
- Gaudenzi, Sandra (2013): The Living documentary
- Johach, Eva (2011): Andere Kanale. Insektengesellschaften und die Suche nach den Medien des Sozialen
- Latour, Bruno (2002) Die Hoffnung der Pandora. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp
- Lefebvre, Henri (1990) Rhythmanalysis
- Serres, Michel (1982) The Parasite. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press
- Siegert, Bernhard (2007) Die Geburt der Literatur aus dem Rauschen der Kanäle
- Snyder, Hunter (2013) Leviathan. VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 29 Number 2 Fall 2013
- Uexküll, Jakob v. (1973) Theoretische Biologie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp
- Werber, Niels (2013) Ameisengesellschaften - Eine Faszinationsgeschichte. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer
Links
- Mind control in ant zombies
- ANTENNAE 3/2007
- Interview with Raghavendar Gadagkar by Alexander Kluge at dctp in 2009
- Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University
Kindly supported by
Center for Anthropology and Gender Studies at Freiburg University - ZAG
© Fetzner/Dornberg 2014