I had an excellent experience thinking with the workshop participants and presenting on “Habitats and habitants: Towards a politics of bodies, relations, & waste” (aka Space Poop).
The workshop »Critical Times. Part II: Ecologies of Relation« brought together Post-Doc’s, PhD’s and advanced MA students from the humanities, social science, as well as arts and design to engage in a discussion about critical times and materialities, postcolonial and posthuman critique, non-European perspectives, and notions of »deep time« of materialities.
https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/activities/13303/critical-times-part-ii-ecologies-of-relation
»Critical Times. Part II: Ecologies of Relation« unfolded a critical conversation, contesting linear conceptions of time, reductionist notions of materiality, and teleological solutionism, by focusing on ecologies and relations. Either term, ecology and relation, has received much attention over the last decade, especially in the arts, design, and humanities. Both emphasize the intersection of different domains of knowledge, media and practice to understand and navigate the challenges of an increasingly complex present. With the workshop, we aimed to critically address and resituate the multi-faceted dimensions of both through in-depth and creative formats. »Critical Times II« took place from April 11 — 13, 2024 at »Buitenplaats Brienenoord« and »RASL Rotterdam Arts and Science LAB« in Rotterdam.
Habitats and habitants: Towards a politics of bodies, relations, & waste
Examining the feat of maintaining life in orbit draws a sharp focus to the ecological and engineered relationship between bodies and environments, the porous and circulatory matter that blurs any boundaries between habitat and habitant. These intimate, engineered spaces evoke a microcosm of urgent planetary concerns surrounding air and water resources, and waste capture, storage, and elimination. Amidst various private and public space programs’ stated goals, both national agencies and entrepreneurs have been planning for more intensive off planet operations, often part of apocalyptic narratives of a perceived planetary obsolescence. Such formulations of the planet and space in relation to waste, wasting, and humankind contain within them colonial spatiotemporalities of abandonment, discard, and escape. This paper explores NASA’s management of biological operations and discharge wastes in low gravity environments. Without strong gravitational fields, liquids coalesce at the location they are created, instead of flowing down and away. Such excesses disrupt the orderly engineered environments and minutely monitored bodies of these techno-scientific endeavors. Analyzing astronaut tears, space gynecology, zero-g surgery, and NASA’s »Space Poop Challenge« through feminist queer and disability theory, new materialist, and discard studies lenses, this paper seeks to refigure the deeply entangled relationships between fleshy bodies and planetary bodies, biomass and geomass, and prompt new discussions of gravity politics.
saltygeographies 