TENTACULAR GEOGRAPHIES OF TRAUMA AND HEALING: THINKING THROUGH DE-OXYGENATION
This project focuses on instances where a lack of oxygen resulted in severe trauma for existing and future-based conceptions of life, death and the co-existence of non-human agencies. From Eric Garner’s last words ‘I can’t breathe’ to Covid-19-related hypoxemia to the epic formations of mucilage due to oxygen deprivation in the Sea of Marmara (Turkey), de-oxygenation is a critical indicator of the material, immaterial, hegemonic and psychological configurations of the relations between human- and water-bodies and others. Drawing on critical speculation and Lacanian theories of the Real, the talk aims to explore these relations multimodally using sensory, visual, textual and map-based methods. Based on the uniquely disturbing spectacle of de-oxygenated landscapes, the inquiry will think tentacularly through toxicity to understand suffocation trauma and possible routes to collective healing.
Asli Duru is a Berlin-based cultural-political geographer, wellbeing researcher, mother, long-distance walker and traditional archer. She is currently writing research-based fiction and non-fiction on digital home-spaces, ownership, urban and community mental health—imaginations, practices and limitations. In a broader sense, she is interested in in-depth multimodal research design and developing cultural practices and narrative using existing and emergent media to activate formal and informal speculative practices that contribute to transdisciplinary knowledge on gender, difference and space-place relations.
International Committee to Save the Earth Through Speculative Fabulation
Dovilė Aleksaitė, Fee Altmann, Sanja Anđelković, Elisabeth Brun, Belén Cerezo, Suvam Das, Damian Domes, Raquel Felgueiras, Kausik Ghosh, Florian Goeschke, Vanessa Graf, Anouk Hoogendoorn, Kristin Johnsen, Paul R Jones, Dani Landau, Stacy Lo, Madhuja Mukherjee, Roksana Niewadzisz, Christine Reeh-Peters, Marie-André Robitaille, Gonzalo H. Rodriguez, Szilvia Ruszev, Sanja Särman, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, Alisi Telengut, Bela Usabaev, Joshua Wagner, Lisa Walder, Dörte Weig