Uriel Orlow

Contribution of Reading Wood (Backwards) and a discussion On Eco-operations and Decoloniality: A Discussion with Uriel Orlow, Dalida María Benfield, T.J. Demos, Fabienne Liptay, Lukas Brasiskis, to Eco-Operations, edited by Liliana Gómez and Fabienne Liptay, 2024.

The climate change crisis has become part of aesthetic discourse and critical research in culture and the arts. Future-oriented, ecologically conceived possibilities for action are being explored by artists, curators, and scholars alike. Eco-operations addresses these emerging aesthetic ecologies and new technologies of cooperation that both challenge and shape a sustainable future, foregrounding interruptions, ruptures, disconnections, dissonances, exclusions, and allochronism. Moving beyond the concepts of “flow” and “network” as a single, coherent (ecological or technological) system, Eco-operations instead emphasizes the frictions within asynchronously running systems. The infrastructures and formats of artistic production and exhibition play a central role here, as they themselves constitute ecosystems that invite and regulate processes of sharing and exchange. Artists and activists are embedded in these ecosystems, in which they simultaneously intervene when searching for alternative ways of creating collaborative practice. Bringing together scholars, artists, writers, and curators, and working across a range of disciplines, Eco-operations explores this field of tension between global and local ecologies, and aims to speculate on where dissonances imply both creative potential and political challenges.

With contributions by Dalida María Benfield, Ursula Biemann, Lisa Blackmore, T. J. Demos, Laura Flórez & Lorena García Cely, Sandra ­Frimmel, Alexandra Gelis, Liliana Gómez, ­Fabienne ­Liptay, Ana María Lozano, Uriel Orlow, Dorota Sajewska.

PDF for the full contribution here.