GENERAL HUMANITY considers itself a Planet Mars of theory, poetry, performance and activism beyond the ideologies of naturalism (all is physis) and rationalism (abstract thought and free will). A planet Mars from which to deconstruct the ontological map of colonialism (of which we Westerners are the very first victims) and civilisationism (the domestication of affects through religious and civil law; the domestication of plants and animals). A planet from which to recontruct mutually beneficially relations among the a/biotic community.
GENERAL HUMANITY’s point of departure is the double finding that academic and artistic research remain prisoners of codes and rules that turn them into self-recursive and sterile practices.2 Facing a situation of disintegration (ecological, economic and political), both are called upon to reinvent a rapport with the world we are a part of. Instead of the deep paranoia of a hostile world and the obsession of control and exploitation of late capitalism we need a deep relation of inventive co-habitation and mutual play of influence; instead of intra- and interspecies competition (survival of the fittest) we need a transspecies co-creation and co-evolution (survival of the best related).3 For this purpose, General Humanity proposes to extend the concept of humanity to all beings that are part of the a/biotic community Earth – not as a doubtful anthropomorphism but in acknowledgement of the manifold social and political relations that characterize it de facto; humanity, then, is no longer the name of a (dominant) species but of a way of (mutual) relating. Bringing together heterogeneous thoughts and practices in a performative melting pot, the lab’s members coming from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds try to find the exact molecular combination capable of fracturing the constraints of a disciplinary and anthropocentric feedback loop and to project us in a “beyond” (Mario Tronti, 2019): an “otherworld” where thought, feeling, communication and action is shared across species borders and the life/nonlife divide.4
Ideas rush by like weather events. The art is not to freeze them.
Ursula Biemann, Subatlantic (2015)
Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.
Pauline Oliveros, “Native,” Sonic Meditation V (1974)
The event is a creative gesture creating a new refrain.
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, After the Future.
GENERAL HUMANITY 