Innesti: Lecture as part of the Multimedia Communication and New Media Aesthetics courses – School of New Technologies for Art
The Colombian artist Santiago Reyes Villaveces will speak as part of the Multimedia Communication and New Media Aesthetics courses (School of New Technologies for Art) to illustrate his Graft, a project that aims to address the legacies of colonial knowledge systems used to control nature and expand extractivism to outer space.
Through Latin American science fiction and marginalised knowledge systems, Graft offers a critical reflection on the limits of human survival and the future of life forms beyond our planet by exploring the concept of grafting and its application to our relationship with outer space.
Graft is inspired by Project A119, an ultra-secret plan developed by the United States Air Force in 1958 to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon. This plan was only revealed in 2000, when it was declassified. Although it was intended to demonstrate the technological prowess of the United States and boost national morale after the Soviet launch of Sputnik, its execution would have had unimaginable consequences for Earth’s ecosystems and could have led to the potential militarisation of space. The secrecy surrounding this project underlines the importance of questioning the motivations behind the exploration and exploitation of space.
This project is based on two recent exhibitions: “Graft”, exhibited at the Institute of Vision Gallery in New York in 2023, which presents new drawings, sculptures and videos that explore the colonial desires that drive current space exploration; and “Arabidopsis Thaliana”, a collaboration with Ilona Jurkonytė, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá in 2021, which challenges conventional notions of environment and economy. Inspired by the historic event of Lithuanian scientists growing a specimen of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana in space in 1982, “Arabidopsis Thaliana” examines the impact of colonialism and Cold War knowledge production regimes on space exploration.
Santiago Reyes Villaveces examines the knowledge systems used to control and colonise nature. His work consists of drawings, installations (large-scale and site-specific), moving images and sculptures. Santiago sees these formats as techniques for addressing power systems and their contemporary materiality. His most recent projects focus on the current colonisation of space, reflecting on the limits of extractivism and the survival of life forms inside and outside our planet.
For info: e.rossi@abaroma.it
Communications Office of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Coordination: Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti g.gigliotti@abaroma.it
Collaboration: Chiara Picco, Marianna Pontillo comunicazione@abaroma.it