The Multispecies Salon migrated from San Francisco to New Orleans in November 2010, as oil from the Deepwater Horizon spread in the Gulf of Mexico. Freshly blasted by multiple disasters, the urban landscape of New Orleans became a place where a multitude of thinkers and tinkerers were bringing critical attention to the idea of hope.
Curated by Eben Kirksey and Myrtle von Damitz III, the first exhibit held at The Ironworks, a warehouse in the emerging Saint Claude Arts District, gathered together artists, scientists and other culture workers to engage in strategic storytelling about Hope in Blasted Landscapes. There some sixty artworks were presented orbiting around a central question: “In the aftermath of disasters—in blasted landscapes that have been transformed by multiple catastrophes—what are the possibilities of biocultural hope?”
A few blocks away, at an established part of the St. Claude Arts District called The Front, Nina Nichols and Amy Jenkins herded Edible Companions. Visitors were served up delicacies such as edible insects and cheese made from human milk with some reporting feelings of indigestion – a feeling that can disturb seemingly settled relations and generate new sorts of entangled associations.
Up the road at Kawliga Studios, Marnia Johnston & Myrtle von Damitz III gathered moderately empowered intellectuals to think through changing conditions of Life in the Age of Biotechnology. They dwelt on spectacular works of bio-art pieces that embodied the implications of freeing laboratory laborers and letting the products of biotechnology run wild as well as subtler attempts to dismantle multispecies spectacles.
Further Reading
Kirksey, Eben et al. (2014) “Hope in Blasted Landscapes” in The Multispecies Salon, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 29-63.
Kirksey, Eben (2014) “Edible Companions” in The Multispecies Salon, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 112-113.
Kirksey, Eben et al. (2014) “Life in the Age of Biotechnology” in The Multispecies Salon, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 193-196.
