Lecture

Urban Habitats and Multispecies World-building

Daniela Brasil

Cities have always been and are growing more and more into a home and a refuge for diverse species who found in the urban settings conditions for their survival, as shelter and food. Due to the expansion of human-made, profit-oriented extractivist and colonizing practices, diverse natural habitats were reduced, became endangered or destroyed: HABITAT LOSS became a planetary major problem. In the face of these multiple planetary crises and climate emergencies, many current urban policies are trying to protect, restore, repair, and recreate their natural ecosystems. Cities’ relation to nature is being interrogated and reshaped.

In this context, the current exhibition in Graz Museum entitled Habitat Graz examines how the entanglement of anthropo- and non-anthropogenic agency can be visible in the formation and development of the city itself. By acknowledging the complexity and interrelatedness of urban ecologies, the curatorial approach focuses on the city as an ever-changing multi-species Habitat, an ever-changing organism where diverse life forms flourish and decay. It navigates the historical, ecological and poetical layers of interdependence among species by showcasing stories of the reciprocity that animates the world in the selected urban case studies.

Bio:

Daniela Brasil is an artist, urbanist, curator, educator and researcher interested in decolonial pedagogies; social, ecological and epistemological justice, as well as regenerative practices that foster the pluriverse. Her recent artistic and curatorial works focus on exploring ways to re-establish healthy relationships between the human, more-than-human and the Earth. She studied Architecture and Urbanism in Rio de Janeiro, Environmental Urban Design in Lisbon and Barcelona, Social Sculpture in Oxford and received her MFA and PhD in Artistic Strategies for Public Participation at the Bauhaus University Weimar. She is currently a curator at the Graz Museum, and a member of the Daily Rhythms Collective and the Ecoversities Alliance.

This Talk has been conceived by Daniela Ortiz dos Santos and Carsten Ruhl, in the scope of the Lecture Series HOUSING AND…  It invites a diverse group of guests to examine Housing in between architectural production, the historical, socio-political and territorial context, the heritage and cultural making processes, as well as the public space and the public debate.

Download the program here

Register for remote participation via Zoom here