Radical Ecologies

Summary

Spring 2020 launch

Increasingly, our relationships with “natural” phenomena are being mediated by algorithms, screens, and machines: consider, for example, remote sensing of geological activity, or modeling of atmospheric climate change. As new computational methods (e.g., machine learning and artificial intelligence) promise to further improve the fidelity of systems sciences, which assume that more data equals better knowledge, we contend that these methods simultaneously reproduce colonial systems of dispossession and extermination, as well as structure significant blind-spots rendering invisible the radical ecologies surrounding us today. 

The Radical Ecologies H-Lab aims to question connections and collisions between power and ecology by incorporating materials, experimental methods, and field-based techniques into human-centered modes of social and cultural analysis. The Rad Lab will address what we call “radical ecologies,” namely, collective forms of life that question how we understand stability and risk; toxicity and temporality; geo-sociality and science fiction; and multi-scalar holobionts (assemblages of different species into ecological units) and infrastructures. 

The Rad Lab explores the following overlapping themes: designing collectivity (as a way to contend with rapid environmental change and increasing unpredictability); temporality (recognizing the simultaneous existence of differing time scales and also emerging novel temporalities); power (as manifested through engineering and science); multi-species relations (ecologies as models for collaborative survival); and toxic animacies (coexistence and collaboration in the context of environmental disturbance).

Lab Team

• Maria Paz Almanera
  Doctoral Candidate, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt
• Tega Brain
  Industry Assistant Professor, Technology, Culture and Society, Tandon 
• Elaine Gan
  Visiting Assistant Professor, XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement, Graduate School of Arts and Science
• Nabil Hassein
  Doctoral Student, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt
• Elizabeth Henaff
  Assistant Professor, Technology, Culture and Society, Tandon 
• Karen Holmberg
  Research Scientist and Co-Director of the WetLab, Gallatin School of Individualized Study
• Meg Weissner
  Doctoral Candidate, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt
• Diana Zhu
  Doctoral Candidate, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt