14:30–16:30 Swamp Observatory: Instrumentarium For a New Climatic Regime
Presentation with artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas moderated by Andris Brinkmanis

It is not easy to define a swamp, even in biology, and it escapes the rationale of simple mathematics, being a complex and multilayered natural environment. The term is frequently used to characterise marshes, bogs, mires, wetlands, meadows, and other grey zones between land and water. In that sense, “swamp” is a metonym for a variety of transitional ecosystems and functions. This presentation will invoke this concept as a tool to address the vital urgency of human cohabitation with other forms of life, placing the swamp at the crossroad of disciplines and practices. It is more than a biological ecosystem; it is a milieu of manifold sympoietic relationships, a locus of imagination, fostering the dialogue for possible futures. It is also a very particular modality — “an interface of Gaia” — offering a “face,” a certain physiognomy to faceless networks of relations, inviting us to engage in regimes of entanglement.

Urbonas will expand on wet (environment) and dry ontologies (technology) and other swampy notions, probing global and speculative art and architecture, intercalating philosophy and queer theory, and filtering these notions through the lens of posthumanist ecology, informed by the histories and theories of cybernetics, sociology, and the commons.