Environing Technologies and Elemental Necropolitics of War

Svitlana Matviyenko

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Ended

This seminar will unfold in two parts. In the first, we will establish a common language by familiarising ourselves with several key concepts – environing media and technologies, elemental warfare, and the transition from battlefield to battlespace. We will read and closely analyze a set of texts in order to clarify how these concepts operate and what kinds of environments they describe and produce.

In the second part, we will turn to some of the works in the CTM 2026 Exhibition –  Ioana Vreme Moser’s »Arsenic Ballerinas,« Sissel Marie Tonn & Jonathan Reus’s »The Intimate Earthquake Archive,« Fragmentin’s »G80,« Naomi Rincón Gallardo’s »Sonnet of Vermin,« Hoda Afshar’s »Undone,« Nikita Kadan’s »Tryvoha (The Sirens and the Mast),« Essa Grayeb’s »My Whole Heart is with You,« and Zhanna Kadyrova’s »The Forest« – and think with them through these concepts. Together, we will unpack how these works render toxic geopolitical atmospheres and deadly enclosures of war, how regimes of (environmental) terror and slow / fast violence are sustained by elemental necropolitics, and how such conditions are environed.

We will ask: How does one inhabit an environment that has been turned against its inhabitants? What forms of collective endurance and care emerge when the elemental texture of life becomes militarised? And finally, what kinds of political and ecological solidarities become possible when resistance must unfold through the very media that war seeks to weaponise?

Requirements

This workshop is open to all, with a particular focus on artists and researchers.

Ahead of the workshop, we recommend that participants take time to experience the CTM 2026 Exhibition, which is running at the nearby Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien and daadgalerie. Entrance to the exhibition is free of charge.

We also recommend checking the following reading list ahead of attending. Links lead to downloadable articles/book sections:

Adam Wickberg & Johan Gärdebo, »What Are Environing Media?« Environing Media eds., Adam Wickberg & Johan Gardebo. Routledge, 2023, pages: 1-10.

Sverker Sörlin & Nina Wormbs, »Environing Technologies: A Theory of Making Environment.«History and Technology 34:2 (2018): required pages: 103-110.

Stuart Elden, »Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power,«Political Geography 34 (2013) 35-51.

Event Access

Note: this event is not included in festival passes. Please consult our Accessibility section for information on volume / lighting, mobility, age restrictions and other access information.

This workshop is presented with tekhnē, a network initiative that is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

With kind support from the Embassy of Canada.