Lecture: Parasite Lost: in Search of New Frontiers

Katja Novitskova’s talk will look into the topic of ecological frontiers through the lens of her work as a contemporary artist. On a planetary scale humanity’s expansion of the last centuries can be seen as having passed the threshold from ‘simply being social animals’ towards parasitic in relation to the rest of the species and Earth itself. This process has been driven by the logic of frontier colonialism, according to which any mineral or living thing is seen as a potential resource to be industrially extracted and exploited in disregard to their innate purpose and place, and to the suffering of people on its way.

The scale of this expansion has resulted in exponential growth of human-occupied territories that has lead to catastrophic collapse of overall biodiversity and whole ecosystems. By today, overwhelming majority of peoples and lands have been colonised, natural resources are depleting and it’s clear that the Earth as a host is becoming too injured for business to continue as usual. In this somewhat self-aware moment of crisis, new frontiers have emerged that promise the continuation of unlimited growth beyond the limits of geography and biology: space minerals and genetic engineering. Parasite not lost!?

Bio - KATJA NOVITSKOVA (Tallinn, EE, 1984) is a visual artist working in a variety of media, from books to installations. She lives in Amsterdam and Berlin. In her work she creates ecological narratives using visual material found online related to various technologies of seeing and modelling reality: from attention economies to machine vision and biotechnological research. She studied semiotics at the University of Tartu in Estonia and graphic design at Sandberg Instituut, Netherlands. In 2011, she published her first artist book and curatorial project ‘Post Internet Survival Guide’. Since then her work has been exhibited globally.