TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

The dynamic interplay of taboo, transgression, and transcendence offers a critical lens through which to explore the convergence of art and science within a perspective of ecology and media. We will look at ‘Ecomedia’ (Peters 2015, Jue 2020, Iheka 2021, Jue and Ruiz 2021), which engages with a deep reconfiguration of media as environments generative of the processes, in which ecological, cultural, and epistemological boundaries are renegotiated. Further, by drawing on Bateson’s Steps of an ecological mind (1972) and Michel Serres’ concept of the parasite (Serres 1982), we will show that the notion of interference between ecology and media becomes a productive framework for examining how art and science disrupt and reconfigure dominant systems, particularly in the context of environmental entanglements.

In Pia Arke’s *Tupilakusaurus* project, the parasitic figure of the Tupilak emerges as both an environmental and media construct. Drawing from Greenlandic mythology, the Tupilak is not only an artifact of cultural memory but also a critique of systemic exclusions within European art history. The methodological combination of art and science in Arke’s work mirrors an ecological media system, where cultural narratives, material histories, “elemental politics”, and technological practices intersect. Serres’ three parasitic systems—biological, social, and informational—are here reconceptualized through ecomedia theory, where interference serves as a means of reimagining relationships between human and nonhuman agents, media technologies, and planetary systems.

Theories of ecology and media situate the Tupilak as an ecological agent, amplifying its critique of colonialism through the materiality of media itself. The parasite becomes a medium of transgression, destabilizing Eurocentric frameworks by foregrounding the interconnectedness of cultural and ecological systems. Arke’s work resonates with Gregory Bateson’s principle that the unit of survival is organism plus environment, while also invoking Guattari’s ecosophy, where rooted parasitism critiques the "ecology of bad ideas" sustaining systems of exclusion (Guattari 2000).

By addressing taboos surrounding the limits of human and nonhuman agency, the transgressive potential of art-science collaboration invites a rethinking of identity, boundaries, and resilience. The parasitic interference into the convergence of ecology and media challenges dominant epistemologies, fostering an inclusive, multispecies critique of modern culture. Arke’s *Tupilakusaurus* thus exemplifies (as the title *Empirical Monsters* reflects) the monstrous as a method of interference and critique of the ways that art and theories of ecology and media may engage in a generative dialogue, reshaping the epistemological and cultural landscapes which we inhabit.

Gregory Bateson. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Felix Guattari, 2000. The Three Ecologies. London and New Brunswick: The Athlone Press.

Cajetan Iheka. 2021. African Ecomedia. Network Forms, Planetary Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Melody Jue. 2020. Wild Blue Media. Thinking Through Seawater. Durham: Duke University Press.

Saturation. An Elemental Politics.  2021. Melody Jue and Rafico Ruiz (eds.), Durham and London: Duke Unniversity Press.

John Durham Peters. 2015. The Marvelous Clouds. Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Michel Serres. The Parasite. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press