(2019-2020)
Collaboration: Nayari Castillo & Daniela Brasil / Daily Rhythms Collective
Partner Institutions: AAI
Funding: Stadt Graz — Graz Kulturjahr 2020
Position in Project: Project Lead, Artistic Research, Curator, Art Production
Web-page: https://www.kulturjahr2020.at/projekte/homeostasis/
Homeostasis is the mechanism by which organisms or systems maintain balance or return to it when needed. This natural regulation engine aims to maintain a dynamic equilibrium while evidencing the interrelatedness of all the parts that constitute the natural machine. This project proposes the phenomenon of Homeostasis as a metaphor to address the actual need to restore balance within our complex living environments – or the entanglements of individual and collective bodies and actions, human and other-than-human, borders and flows, on the local and global levels. It establishes an expanded artistic/ pedagogical format to bring together local and international artists, ecologists, urbanists, and earth-rights defenders to reimagine the entanglements of ecology and urbanity while debating and co-creating artistic works in forgotten spaces.
Homeostasis focuses on spaces on the edges of Graz — micro-forests and green areas circumscribed by highways and roundabouts, located near the city’s borders — using them as physical exploration devices to inquire about systemic change and the indispensable alterations to the ways we see, behave, and act within nature. In those spaces, life-flows do not follow the standardly imposed administrative borders. These artificial lines have historically been a source of conflict within political, urbanistic, and ecological discourses, as they do not conform to the coherent regulatory mechanisms of ecosystems. Concepts such as “making kin” and “urban metabolism”, essential references for the research, debate, and artistic outputs, were formulated and speculated upon, expanding our senses of (inter)connection in a post-human world.
During the year of the project, we developed several devices, workshops, exhibitions, performances, and research documentation.