Oikos Logos

a collaboration between Hannah Rowan, Matthew Verdon and Gregory Herbert. Curated by William Clarke at Enclave Lab, Nov 2018.

The term ecology derives itself from the Greek words Oikos (household) and Logos (study), translating as ‘the study of the household’. Oikos Logos has activated Enclave Lab as a festivalistic laboratory departing from the traditional static exhibition structure and instead favouring real-time testing of theory with practice in a residency environment. The festivalistic Laboratory, as a curatorial methodology, is alternative to spectacle by encouraging participation and play to create edutainment value whilst promoting non-violence towards all living things through self-management, coexistence and co- survival. Split into two parts, Enclave Lab has first become a laboratory, in which the artists have taken residence for the past 3 weeks, and secondly an exhibition space where there aren’t singular works, but instead a mapping of an idea.

Jacob Von Uexküll, the father of modern zoology, proposed the term umwelt to describe his findings of closed worlds overlaid on the Earth. His dehumanization of nature combined with the studying of what Anna Tsing would call ‘polyphonic assemblages’ in an ecological community of multi-specie worlds, birthed a radical reconfiguring of Darwinian hierarchies that were then thought to be the natural order. Tsing and Donna Haraway, have furthered Uexküll’s thinking to try and form an ecological postanthropocentric position that has roots within the arts, politics and the social, considering the term Anthropocene as inadequate when addressing the Earth as a shared space of all organisms. Anna Tsing, an American anthropologist, questions in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015) at what point does a ‘gathering become a happening’ when species act upon each other drawing “one world making project into the other”. We are aware that multispecies alliances already occur without humans in the symbiosis of the Earth and we are now learning how to be included in this, sewing together our stories to the Earths. Another of Tsing’s notions is that of a ‘contamination as collaboration’. Can human contamination of the Earth’s environments, ecologies and creatures evolve into some form of collaboration? How does the non-human interact with other others? How do we articulate and narrate the nonhuman ‘other,’ through what language, and in what setting?

Human influenced ecologies can create new environmental networks by mutualisticly transferring material; we provide technological assistance to coral growth so they can reproduce faster to combat human caused coral bleaching, providing a life source for many of the oceans creatures. We could think of humans as becoming a fluid component of the Earth’s mesh, even if we aren’t necessary to its survival; we are a node, a paranode and a communication link. The strange stranger, which Timothy Morton suggests is an uncanny ‘arrivant’ in a space where no one is sure who is who or what is what highlights the interconnectedness of this mesh. It is a blended ecotone, where two ecologies meet and all life forms act upon each other, rendering it difficult to distinguish one from another. The mesh, Morton suggests, is a more suitable word to describe natural networks as they are beyond concept as something that can be both the holes in a network and the threading between them.

Text by William Clark, images Jedrek Filus, Nov 2018

Materials List

 Activated carbon pellets

Activated growing substrate

Air stones

Aquarium heaters

Biodegradable Carbon

Bottles, glass

Bottles, plastic

Bricks with seaweed, River Thames

Bucket

Bungee cord

Burette stands

Cable ties

Canned plant growth CO2 & applicator

Clamp clips

Clamps, bar

Clamps, C

Clamps, G

Compost

Cooler boxes

Crates

Culture, Chlorella

Culture, Spirulina

Digital thermometers

Drawer divider

Electrical cables

Fish bowls

Flexible hoses

Floral foam bricks

Food containers

Funnel

Geotextile

Green tea

Growbulbs

Growth medium

Hemp rope

Humidifier

Jars, glass

Jars, plastic

Laboratory flask

Lights, aquarium

Lights, clamp

Lights, clip

Lights, growlight

Magnifying glass

Magnifying glass with alligator clips

Mesh bags

Moss balls

Moss, Deptford Creek

Moss, River Thames

Mud, Deptford Creek

Mud, River Thames

Mudlarking finds, River Thames, bones

Mudlarking finds, River Thames, ceramic fragments

Mudlarking finds, River Thames, glass fragments

Mudlarking finds, River Thames, log

Mudlarking finds, River Thames, rusted nails

Mudlarking finds, River Thames, smoking pipe fragments

Network Diagram, Paul Baran’s

Plants, pet store

Plants, Deptford Creek

Plants, River Thames

Plexiglass

Pumps, air

Pumps, water

Rocks, River Thames

Rod

Seaweed iodine supplements

Sticks

Storage boxes

Timer switches

Trays

Tressles

Underground access chamber base with fixed inlets

Underground bottle gully

Underground drainage socket bends

USA - UK plug adapter

Vase

Water, Deptford Creek

Water, River Thames

Water, tap

Wheatgrass

Xanthoria parietina, Maritime Sunburst lichen