Post-Human Infrastructure
“Posthuman” is a concept that critiques anthropocentrism and the philosophical branch of “humanism,” a dominant ethos that has shaped social relations and the way humans relate to the nonhuman world for centuries. Infrastructure is a word that “has been used in French since 1875 and in English since 1887, originally meaning ‘The installations that form the basis for any operation or system.’” Structure is typically defined as “an action or process of building or construction.” Our contemporary definition of structure can be traced from “structus, past participle of struere ‘to pile, place together, heap up; build, assemble, arrange, make by joining together.’” This is derived from *stere-, the Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to spread.”
Posthuman Infrastructure thinks about the life and nonlife of structures. It allows us to de-construct our own selves in relation to the more-than-human through the building of world.
Event Type: In-Person Event
Date: 18 November 2022 (Friday)
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 GMT*
Venue: Atmosphere Room, School of Geography and the Environment
Register for the event here.
* This event will be followed by an informal chat over Tea/Drinks for another hour.
Speaker Profile
Lauren Bon
Lauren Bon is an environmental artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Her practice, Metabolic Studio, explores self-sustaining and self-diversifying systems of exchange that feed emergent properties that regenerate the life web. Her signature project, Bending the River, is an infrastructural artwork that redirects a small portion of the low flow channel of the Los Angeles River and redirects it to form a new tributary. Securing water for the future for the thirty-two-acre train yard turned state park where her 2005 Not A Cornfield was. Metabolic Studio engages the 240-mile cyborg Los Angeles Aqueduct watershed with a complex network of social practice, soil building, toxic residue lifting, native plant cultivating, seed and story sharing, sound activating and photographic experiments. Bending the River Back, aims to utilize Los Angeles’s first private water right to deliver 106-acre feet of water annually from the LA River to over 50 acres of land in the historic core of downtown LA. This model can be replicated to regenerate the 52-mile LA River, reconnect it to its floodplain, and form a decentralized citizens’ utility and a culture of care.
This event is hosted by the Oxford Water Network in collaboration with the MSc Student of the Water Science, Policy and Management Program.
