Exploring the Seventh Continent - I

Laurent de Sutter & Monster Chetwynd, Jennifer Deger & Phillip Zach, Tobias Rees & Agnieszka Kurant, Emanuele Coccia & Eloise Hewser

The 16th Istanbul Biennial offers the image of a ‘new world’ with The Seventh Continent: even if this huge mass of floating plastic wastes cannot be inhabited, it is a territory which is now explored by artists, scientists and thinkers. Their dialogue is the core of the two talk sessions inaugurating and closing the Biennial. An anthropologist, a philosopher, a sociologist, will be associated with one of the participating artists in order to produce new points of view upon the Anthropocene, witnessing the mutations of contemporary thought. A renewed idea of anthropology expanded to the non-humans, and crossings between feminisms, decolonisation theory, cosmology or sociology, will be the main issues of those dialogues.

The dialogue sessions on the opening and closing weeks of the 16th Istanbul Biennial are mapping new territories in contemporary theory, bringing together anthropologists of the non-human or philosophers of the vegetal life, thinkers crossing the boundaries between aesthetics, feminist theory or sociology, as a critical response to the apparition of the floating seventh continent. In which way, and to what extent, will the Anthropocene transform contemporary thought? Every author is paired with an artist from the exhibition, and their two short interventions are followed by a discussion.

Programme

13.00-14.00 Laurent de Sutter & Monster Chetwynd
14.10-15.10 Tobias Rees & Agnieszka Kurant
15.10-15.40 Coffee Break
15.40-16.40 Jennifer Deger & Phillip Zach
16.50-17.50 Emanuele Coccia & Eloise Hewserml

Free of admissions, drop in. This event will take place in the auditorium. The talk will be in English with simultaneous Turkish translation.