Zooetics is a 5 year long art-led interdisciplinary research project organized by Jutempus Interdisciplinary Art Program within the framework of the Frontiers in Retreat network and in partnership with Kaunas University of Technology.
Artist unknown, Tadas Ivanauskas, founder of Lithuanian National Zoo, with a baby-roe, 1950. Courtesy of Ringaudai community archive.
‘Zooetics’ is a word in progress to explore new ways of engaging human knowledge and research with other forms of life and to imagine designs, prototypes and interfaces for future interspecies ecologies. Zooetics encompasses all life from mammals to mollusks to microbes, and addresses the paradigm shift in science, culture and society proposed in the argument of the Anthropocene. It engages with shifts in contemporary understandings of nature.
Zooetics as a platform addresses the site specificity of the Technology University in Kaunas where the campus is historically negotiating its borders with the National Zoo.
Zooetics launched with a series of public keynote lectures in December 2014. There is an evolving online Glossary and Reading Group, open to participation. A series of practice-led research workshops will take place over the next few years. An exhibition and symposium will be held at MIT, Cambridge, US in 2017. A book will be published in 2018. Zooetics eventually will serve as a pilot project leading to the launch of a new research institution in Kaunas in 2018.
more: http://www.zooetics.net/
