What ideological, social and biophysical factors precipitate the current environmental crises? What agency is available for transformative practices and imaginaries to redefine how we satisfy our energy and material requirements and avert large scale ecosystemic breakdown?
Post Growth invites us to challenge the dominant narratives about growth and progress, and explore the radical implications of various artistic prototypes, like an economic model based on energy emitted by the Sun. This speculative research provides perspectives for a shift away from the overexploitation of fossil fuels on which the reproduction of our societies mainly depends today.
Post Growth re-envisions the social metabolism through an understanding of the energy it requires. It aims to reconsider the critical dimension of living and material activities of the biosphere, drawing on ecofeminism, indigenous knowledge, environmental accounting and historical materialism.
Post Growth is an invitation to a collective and practical examination of our shared future, examining the notion of growth, in its many facets and implications, and testing the limits of technology, politics and of our imaginations.
Founded in 2012 by Nicolas Maigret and Maria Roszkowska, DISNOVATION.ORG is both an art collective and an international workgroup engaged in the crossovers between contemporary arts, research and hacking. Artist and philosopher Baruch Gottlieb joined the collective in 2018. Together, they develop situations of interference, discussion and speculation that question dominant techno-positivist ideologies in order to foster post-growth narratives. Their research is expressed through installations, performances, websites and events. They recently co-edited A Bestiary of the Anthropocene, an atlas of anthropic hybrid creatures, and The Pirate Book, an anthology about media piracy.
Their work has been presented at numerous art centers and festivals internationally, such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Transmediale (Berlin), the Museum of Art and Design (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), FILE (São Paulo), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Strelka Institute (Moscow), ISEA (Hong Kong), Elektra (Montréal), China Museum of Digital Arts (Beijing), the Chaos Computer Congress (Hamburg), etc. Their work has been featured in Forbes, Vice, Wired, Motherboard, Libération, Die Zeit, Arte TV, Next Nature, Hyperallergic, Le Temps, Neural.it, Digicult, Gizmodo, Seattle Weekly, torrentfreak.com, and Filmmaker Magazine among others.
Tactics & Practice, the discursive cultural programme dedicated to contemporary investigative art, society and new technologies that has been held regularly in Ljubljana since 2010, this year brings together the efforts and resources of various local institutions to offer a transdisciplinary programme focused on the theme of 'New Extractivism'.
The event is part of a series of solo exhibitions, artist talks, workshops and publications of four internationally renowned artists, presented by Aksioma – Institute of Contemporary Art in collaboration with MGML/Cukrarna and Academy of Fine Arts and Design.