Undisciplinary Reflections on the Artistic Creation of Biotopes for Ants, Plants, and Humans
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Abstract
This article discusses Static Cycle-Biotope for Ants, Plants, and Humans (2024), an interactive eco-art installation that creates a biotope for a biological community containing both plants and Messor barbarus ants. This dynamic space encourages collaboration and mutual observation, questioning the division between nature and culture and exploring the shared agency between humans and other living beings. In its version installed at the Museum of Science and Water in Murcia, the public pedals to maintain the ecosystem, exploring intra-actions, according to Karen Barad’s theoretical framework. The artwork critiques traditional causality, proposing a relational ontology that reveals how human and non-human actions co-constitute shared realities that are shaped as interfaces of inter-species cooperation that, in turn, promote the production of a biophilic subjectivity.
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