Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 7.30 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery
Conversation with
Theresia Enzensberger | Elvia Wilk | Ben Woodard
The fantasy of the empty, uninhabited, or “perfectly natural” place has guided and justified colonial expansion for centuries. Today, outer space is often construed in similar terms: if there’s no one there, then it’s ours for the taking. “Ours,” of course, only refers to those who can afford to try to take it, and to take tends to mean to extract value — in the form of mining, for instance — or to make it habitable for (human) life. Meanwhile, planet Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable for both humans and other species, and the tactics and techniques designed to make faraway planets suitable for life as we know it are increasingly turned toward the ground beneath our feet.
In this conversation, Theresia Enzensberger, Elvia Wilk and Ben Woodard will show representations of uninhabitable spaces in a variety of movies and expand into a discussion about the desires we project onto un/inhabitable landscapes.
The event takes place in collaboration with ZfL Berlin as part of the series “always near”.
