Existing Within the Transitioning Times
Dear —,
Social media "brand management" is not something I'm good at—nor do I necessarily want to be. And sometimes neither am I good at sending e-mail letters, even if thinking about "the letter" is a major part of my practice these days. So please forgive the immense amount of time that has passed between this newsletter and the previous one.
The last time I wrote in August of 2020 (https://mailchi.mp/8d65930594ba/hello-from-ljubljana) I had just arrived in Ljubljana for my Biofriction residency at Kersnikova Institute/Kapelica Gallery. Since then I've moved to Amsterdam for the long-term and gotten settled in doing this thing we call "art" full-time. This is thanks to an incredible 3Package Deal fellowship (https://www.amsterdamsfondsvoordekunst.nl/over-afk/meer-informatie-over-het-fonds/nieuws/3package-deal-2020-vijftien-nieuwe-talenten-van-start/) from the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, which means I have been affiliated with Waag and the Art4Med project (https://art4med.eu/project/xenological-preterrelations/) as well. To be here in Europe and living and working with such wonderful friends and colleagues—many whom I have looked upon in admiration from afar for years—is such a delight, especially during a constraining pandemic.
But I want to get to the point of things here, which is to share a bit of what's happened to me over the past few months, and what is to come in the near future, as well as some thoughts about current projects going on in the background. I do think this may become a bit more of a "toot my horn" letter than I would like it to be, but I thought it best to share all of this in one swoop—and maybe in the future I'll actually write you more than once a year. This is going to be a long letter, so I don't begrudge you if you decide to look away before you reach the end.
Installation view of TX-1 at Cyberarts Exhibition, OK Center, Linz, Austria. Photo by Florian Voggeneder.
Perhaps the most important things to have happened to me, artistically, in the past few months was the awarding of one of the Prix Ars Electronica Awards of Distinction (https://ars.electronica.art/prix/en/winners/artificial-intelligence-life-art/) in Artificial Intelligence and Life Art to the TX-1 (https://tranxxenolab.net/projects/tx-1/) project. To say that I remain humbled by this is quite an understatement. TX-1 was exhibited for the first time during the Cyberarts (https://www.ooekulturquartier.at/events/ok-cyberarts-2021-prix-ars-electronica-exhibition/) exhibition. I was also able to travel to Linz to present a few workshops and engage in some conversations at the in-person Ars festival. Getting to do this was incredible, as it also meant that I finally got to meet a number of people in the physical space that I had only seen in two dimensions.
Me looking at my project. 😆 Photo by Florian Voggeneder.
For me the Award of Distinction is a recognition for more than just the TX-1 project. I see it also as a moment when the established media arts institutions are beginning to recognize the contributions of queer/trans/gender non-conforming artists to the bio art/art+science scene. This isn't to say that we rest on our laurels and just accept these awards blindly, without questioning the time that it took to do this, the continued lack of racial, ethnic, and ability diversity in awardees and juries, and the challenges of getting access to technologies for underrepresented people. But rather, we can use such an award to further develop our practices, use it as one minor marker of progress, use it as a means to make deeper connections with various artist-run and bottom-up spaces and activities the world over.
Photo by ShuLea Cheang.
And thus alongside all of my Ars activities I was also busy with STWST. (So I spent a lot of time on the tram between STWST and JKU 😫) I was invited by ShuLea Cheang and Franz Xavier to have a residency on the Eleonore exploring new ways of manipulating the sonic content of amateur radio signals. Xav and I did a radio discussion about "Hertzian Space" and transmission arts (https://stwst48x7.stwst.at/en/the_hertzian_space) . And then the three of us curated a program called "MAKE ME A SIGNAL" (https://stwst48x7.stwst.at/en/make_me_a_signal) where we invited 10 other artist groups to produce some transmission art, which was presented during a 4 hour long performance on the last day of STWST 48x7 (https://stwst48x7.stwst.at/) . My contribution was a live performance of an on-going series of work called "Constructed Amateur Warblings" (https://tranxxenolab.net/projects/constructed_amateur_warblings_sstv/) , with this edition exploring how to create SSTV images that basically produce hardcore
techno. ShuLea and Xav and I are planning a bigger radio art event on the Stubnitz boat in Hamburg next year and are looking for contributors...if you're interested, reach out to me.
"Writing Letters to Extraterrestrials" event poster, featuring TX-1
A bit over a week after Ars and STWST 48x7, I was off to Berlin to take part in the "Writing Letters to Extraterrestrials" (https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/writing-letters-to-extraterrestrials/) event at ICI Berlin. This too has been an absolute highlight of my year so far. Alison Sperling and I have been talking about this ever since we first met, randomly, on a panel at SLSA in 2018 in Toronto. And through her incredible work and perseverance (along with the support of numerous organizations and individuals, especially ICI), she was able to marshal so many of us together for a powerful, moving, and, I would say, transformative event. "Writing Letters to Extraterrestrials" was majority queer/trans/women/POC, which is such a rarity in sci-fi/speculative circles. And this speaks to Ali's curatorial acumen in bringing such a crowd together. I was honored to present a version of a workshop on letters, lichen, and space that was entitled "Making Contact with Deeper Times". And also Ali and I
had a conversation about my work, our shared interests in letter writing to entities unknown, and aliens. Like Ars I was also able to finally meet a number of amazing people in person, something I'm also incredibly grateful for. Recordings of the event should be available online soon.
I've been lucky to do a number of other events over the past year, including invited lectures/workshops at Rietveld Academy, KABK, AKI, University of Washington, the "Open Source Body" (http://www.opensourcebody.eu/) conference, and the "Material Trajectories: Designing with Care" DGTF conference (https://materialtrajectories.dgtf.de/) . I did a takeover (http://movement.radio/show/Transmission-Ecologies-Ep8-feat-Adriana-Knouf-15062021) of Afroditi Psarra's "Transmission Ecologies" show on Movement Radio in Athens, Greece. Among a few other things that I have probably forgotten to list here.
But one of the things that I have been most delighted to begin developing are workshops around lichens, outer space, deeper times, and letter writing. This began via my residency at Waag and a "field noting" (https://waag.org/en/event/speculative-writing-workshop-how-field-note) workshop earlier this summer. Since then I've presented variations of this workshop at least five other times, which a few more in the coming months. The letters that participants write are so throbbing with desire and loss, hopes and dreams, questions and questions. I'm hoping to someday find a way to share these letters with the world beyond the boundaries of the workshops.
So! What's to come this fall? Pleasant exhaustion.
* A talk on "Noise" for the "Fantasies of Seamless Interoperability" series (https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/programme/149/sensing-urban-matter-fantasies-of-seamless-interoperability/) curated by Agata Marzecova and Hanna Husberg, online, 6.10.2021 at 19:00 EET.
* A trip to Iceland with some students and colleagues
* "Which Bodie(s) in/for Space?" (http://archive.olats.org/space/sasc21/2021/sasc21_2021-eng.php) , Paris, 26.10.2021
* Other Futures Festival, Amsterdam, 5.-6.11.2021
* InScience Festival, Nijmegen, 10.-14.11.2021
* Art4Med consortium meeting, Waag, November 2021
* 3Package Deal exhibition, Amsterdam, December 2021
* Some writing projects that I'll be excited to share more about in a few months
Oh, and I'm also going to be a practice tutor in the "Ecology Futures" (https://www.akvstjoostmasters.nl/programmes/ecology-futures) course in the Master Institute of Visual Cultures at St Joost in Den Bosch this fall, teaching a course entitled "Parables for the Transitioning Times: Amateur Lichenology".
So this leads me to the final part of my letter to you. I'm continuing my past work on space, bodies, living matter, transition, and transmission in work around what I'm calling the "transitioning times". We are all bodies in transition: for me (and maybe for you), around gender transition and hormones; for all of us, around aging, climate change, needed new ways of living on this planet that construct alternatives to capitalist exploitation, and so on. We need new tools for these times. And so my current work is around this, around how we connect to deeper times, how we may learn with other organisms about these things, what new theories and futures we need to conjure, and so on. I'm deep in the development of this work and am looking forward to some things coming to a state of relative stasis and completion next year.
Through this research I have also been doing a lot of reading, so here are a few things I thought you might be interested in:
* David Griffiths, "Queer Theory for Lichens" (https://currents.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/currents/article/download/40249/36048) . Great academic article about the relationships between non-sexual reproduction, questioning of individuality, queerness, and lichens.
* Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate. Incredible novella about the ethics of space exploration. Features bodily transformation with patches...just like estradiol patches for trans women!
* Black Quantum Futurism, "Project: Time Capsule" (https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/survivance/400791/project-time-capsule/) . The role of non-linear times and memories in Black American life.
* ESA, "Milestones in Astrobiology" issue of "Space for Life: Human Spaceflight Science Newsletter" (http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/docs/HumanSpaceflightScienceNewsletters/2015/Newsletter_Apr_2015.pdf) . Interesting references to experiments with organisms, including lichens, on the outside of the International Space Station. Has some great pictures of the process.
And so, dear —, I will end this all-too-braggy letter to you for now. Know that even if I don't write often I am grateful for you being there and interested. And do reach out to me if you like, sometime. I'm going to make an effort to write to you sooner this time.
Until soon, I hope,
Adriana