fremdKÖRPER

Concept and Sculpture for a non-anthropocentric life situation

Architecture arose from the fundamental need to protect humans and the creatures they domesticated from nature. This was not a problem for a long time, but with sedentarisation and the accompanying agriculture, there was already an overuse of the surrounding nature in many places. In contrast, there are examples where natural resources have been and are being used sustainably (Subak System Bali). With humanism and the dualism that came with it, human beings were fundamentally placed in the centre, and their wishes were from then on always in the foreground in relation to nature. In connection with the increasing human quantity, this leads to alienation, exploitation and thus destruction.

Architecture is a major sign of this problem. Due to the increasingly present climate change, attempts are being made to counteract this with various strategies. For example, with circular construction using renewable building materials and operation with renewable energies. A rapprochement with nature is to take place with green envelopes and the accommodation of non-human life forms (animal aided design). These are basically positive developments, but they do not testify to a fundamental change in anthropocentric attitudes. In this artistic project, we would like to attempt a deeper utopian approach, in which humans are not at the centre in a posthumanist sense, but are a cooperative part of a natural system and a renewable process.

The aim is to create a non-anthropocentric situation in a given environment. There, contradictions between humans and the environment dissolve in the sense of a balanced coexistence; humans and their needs are not given priority. This applies to a self-chosen temporal horizon in which the biomass is subject to a natural process of transformation. Man integrates himself in this space in a posthumanist sense as one of many actors, but as a conscious being he can shape the situation according to a constructive synthesis. This utopian but conceptually plausible situation is conveyed by means of drawings, models, texts or performance and represented by an artistic-sculptural object.

Christian Kern

Michael Ulrich Hensel