Undead Matter #6
Nurturing the Ancient Undead
Curated by Sophie J Williamson.
Undead Matter is an unfolding conversation about where life lies in the ever-turning matter of our universe, as it rhythmically resurfaces over millennia.
In the sixth episode, Nurturing the Ancient Undead, artist, Oreet Ashery speaks with paleontologist Tori Herridge about the past lives that emerge from the permafrost. Through these bodies, suspended in time and perfectly preserved over tens-of-thousands of years, they consider genetic legacies and the body as an archive.
Posing contentious questions around the ethics of rewilding and de-extinction projects as processes of new creation rather than of restitution, as well as the controversial drive from some in the scientific community to clone and ‘recreate’ animals from the deep past, Herridge and Ashery probe at the edges of where life starts and the human role in its creation. Through journeys of IVF, fertility and the unborn, they consider examples of hybridity, artificial insemination and cross-species pregnancies as practices that reframe how life is conceived, both metaphorically and in actuality. Weaving through their conversation are readings from Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962). This groundbreaking sci-fi novel, a core influence to Ashery’s practice, collides feminist and anticolonialism thought to question ethics of control over human and non-human bodies.
Undead Matter, initiated and convened by curator Sophie J Williamson, is an ongoing collective project, materialising slowly and organically in exhibitions, events, podcasts, publishing and the intangible. The Undead Matter programme has emerged through intersecting collaborations with artists, poets, dancers and musicians, as well cryomicrobiologists, shamen, paleontologists, mineralogists, archaeoastronomers, woodworkers, quantum physicists, bondage masters, cryonics speculators and others encountered along the way. Each offers a perspective on our place within the infinite impermanence of life: past, present and possible.
<p>Curated by Sophie J Williamson. Produced by Undead Matter. Sound by Either/Or Recordings. "Memoirs of a Spacewoman", read by Hira Nabi.</p>
related episodes
Life at the Edges of Shifting Rhythms
Artist and filmmaker, Shezad Dawood speaks with social and geopolitical anthropologist Mark Nuttall, whose work is embedded in circumpolar rural communities, tracing the entanglements between climate change, extractive industries and identity of place. They discuss the accumulated residues, ecological cosmologies and shifting futures that have emerged from the deepest corners of the oceans, the icy subsurface and geological entanglements of Greenland’s complex landscapes and the lives they hold. Creation myths, told by Greenlandic storyteller Maria Kreutzmann, bubble up from the dark depths of the ocean and rub up against dramatic changes in the landscape throughout the past century.
Permafrost hydrofeminism
In this new instalment of Undead Matter, Cultural theorist, Astrida Neimanis speaks with permafrost hydrologist, Nikita Tananaev, discussing the cultural, philosophical and ecological implications of permafrost degradation as it disrupts ancient ecosystems suspended in the ice.
Resurfacing lives
In this episode, artist Bo Choy speaks with Sayana Namsaraeva, an anthropologist from Buryatia, south-eastern Siberia, exploring the traditional traditions and stories that have emerged from the landscapes surrounding Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest freshwater lake on the planet, and how these influence worldviews and possibilities for the future.