Son[i]a #341
Maria Ptqk
![Son[i]a #341](https://img.macba.cat/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/octopifinalhanddrawnsm.jpeg)
Maria Ptqk (b. Bilbao, 1976) likes to ask questions (and to question herself). In fact, her work revolves around the use of questions as a critical and speculative tool. With a PhD in Artistic Research and a background in Law and Economics, Maria Ptqk has spent the last two decades operating in the cultural sector through different frequencies and channels: her practice mutates with equal passion and rigor from writing to scientific-philosophical dissemination, curating (physical and digital exhibitions), publishing, organising workshops… all kinds of “weird formats”. An inter- and trans-disciplinary career that finds expression in the collective zones of friction in which art, technoscience, ecofeminism, and social communication rub shoulders.
In this podcast, we talk to Maria Ptqk about the possible methodological alliances between art and science. We check out her recent years of research, which have crystalised in the exhibition Science Friction. Life among companion species and in other embodiments and projects. We look at the narrative dimension of scientific knowledge, via Donna Haraway, and at the symbiotic relationships between interdependent organisms through the work of Lynn Margulis. We rethink the complex boundaries between the cultural and natural spheres, and we also embrace the monstrous, in order to call for a multispecies paradigm that overturns human supremacy and takes on a political form in actions such the movements for the Rights of Nature, inspired by indigenous cosmovisions.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with writer, researcher and curator Maria Ptqk. We open the door to indigenous epistemologies that help us identify Western mechanisms of knowledge production and legitimisation, we problematise the notion of invasive species, and, three decades after the Cyborg Manifesto, we put a question from Maria Ptqk to Donna Haraway in a bottle.
Yayo Herrero
Yayo Herrero talks about different forms of ecofeminsim, about the political management of desires, expectations, and needs, about the importance of reproductive work and the need to find new patterns of social and institutional co-responsibility, and about the management of the commons.
Jaime Vindel
We talk to researcher, teacher, and essayist Jaime Vindel about art, entropy and economics. We go into museums and petrol stations to understand their materiality. We talk about the universal exhibitions of the 19th century and how the removal of objects from their places of origin is directly linked to the process of environmental degradation. We look at their steel and glass pavilions, and find the concrete. We also discuss coal and oil, the concept of productivity, and the dark underbelly of certain visual imaginaries