TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

Transfiguration and mutation as a means of survival in planetary evolution (Recipe book)

The proposed project is part of a larger postdoctoral research.

While environmental policies and sustainable industries focus on containing and reversing climate change I speculate on the emergence of a new human-other state resulting from the irreversible anthropogenic actions on the biosphere. Instead of dark times in terraforming, I propose a shift in the understanding of the polluted ecosystem as a home for new modes of symbiotic interspecies adaptations. Further, I speculate on the cultural transformation that may arise in response to this new ecological condition. 

In this interdisciplinary research, I combine the fields of biology, evolution studies, and the subject of transitory habitats with humanities and the arts. More-than-human and post-anthropocentric studies have already examined how interspecies dependency and their entanglement in an ecosystem are reflected in humanities and culture. For instance, in philosophical epistemology, authors such as Karen Barad suggest that all living and non-living are continuously intra-acting (acting within). Monika Bakke discusses the ontological indeterminacy and the infinite possibilities interwoven in materiality and the new matters arriving through metabolic forces. 

To survive and endure dynamic environmental conditions, living beings take on various adaptive and transforming mechanisms so that they can continue to exist in constantly changing habitats. This concept is already echoed by mythology, cosmology, terraforming, deep time and science fiction stories. Science fiction has a special place in this research because  fertile ground for testing interdisciplinary research by bridging science, environmental ethics, and speculative thought.