2nd METAHUMAN FUTURES FORUM

/ LIVEABLE FUTURES FORUM

This year as a section & associated event of the 13th Beyond Humanism Conference

Part of the Bodynet-Khorós EU project

>>>   13th BHC   &   2nd MFF    PROGRAMME.v3    pdf

>>>    13th BHC_&   2dn MFF   ABSTRACT_BOOKLET     pdf

University of the Aegean, Mytilini, Lesvos – 3-7 July 2023

EARTH LIBERATION:

Undoing Human Supremacy and its Extinction Loop

Jaym* del Val – Trial against Humanity-1
Jaym* del Val – Trial against Humanity-2
Metahuman Futures Manifesto discussion

Aleksandra Łukaszewicz – Aesthetics of Care in Art and Everyday Life

TRASH-HUMAN & METAHUMAN STUDIES

BODYNET-KHORÓS FORUM 3 & LAB 5

+ METAHUMAN LAB

Workshop at Skala Eressos, Lesvos: 26th – 30th June.

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 Organising Committee: Jaime del Val, Evi Sampanikou.

Part of the Metahuman Futures Forum Series.

Metahuman Futures Forum Advisory Board: Yunus Tuncel, Cagdas Dedeoglu, Evi Sampanikou, Jan Stasienko, Stefan Lornez Sorgner,

Francesca Ferrando, Yvonne Förster, Kevin LaGrandeur, Sacha Kagan, Mark Coeckelbergh. – Coordinator: Jaime del Val.

This second MFF is an evolution from the 2022 1st MFF in Lesvos.

Like in 2022 a Metahuman Lab workshop will also happen ins Skala Eressos on the week before.

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We have only one thing to give up. Our dominion. We don’t own the world. We’re not kings yet.  Not gods. 

Can we give that up?  Too precious, all that control?  Too tempting, being a god?

Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins), in the Film Instinct, 1999

In words of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday 7th November 2022 at COP27[1] “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator […] It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century. It is unacceptable, outrageous and self-defeating to put it on the back burner […]  Indeed, many of today’s conflicts are linked with growing climate chaos. The war in Ukraine has exposed the profound risks of our fossil fuel addiction[…] Today’s crises cannot be an excuse for backsliding or greenwashing. If anything, they are a reason for greater urgency, stronger action and effective accountability […]  It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact — or a Collective Suicide Pact… Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish.”

In face of the ongoing 6th Great Mass Extinction created by anthropogenic action since the last millennia and exponentially accelerating, threatening all life on earth including “humans”, it is urgent to stop our flight forwards, to stop having our foot on the accelerator towards extinction, to stop looking to the side with human supremacy excuses. It is THE GREATEST EVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGE IN THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH, as it is the first time that a species of the Planet Unleashes a Mass Extinction: this is THE post/metahuman topic. But little can be done if no powerful voice is heard and critical intellectuals, artists, and even activists keep avoiding the core problems: our toxic sedentary occupation of the earth and overpopulation.

The challenge is that all life on earth needs to be equally taken care of. This implies acknowledging the way currently dominant human life is entirely grounded on a massive disruption, exploitation and extermination of much of the other 8,7 million species. We occupy at least a half of the earth’s liveable surface mostly with devastating monocrops, which are mostly for the 100 billion sentient beings enslaved in concentration camps called farms, for feeding the cruelty of a superpredator that suicidally drags itself to extinction. ALL LIFE ON EARTH  NEEDS TO BE LIBERATED.

In face of this the most radical but ignored meta-/posthumanist revolution is coming from anthropology and the Original Affluent Society theory that since the 1960’s claims that gatherers-hunters live and lived better than agrarian-urban societies  (see below in topics). Learning to live again as gatherers without sedentary architectures, and learning from animal architecture is a challenge, along the overpopulation challenge, for which our life projects need to shift from compulsory multiplication to symbiosis with the world.

Another revolution proposed along the previous one is a choral-dance and proprioception revolution.  As proposed by Havelock Ellis in his 1923 book The Dance of Life of whose publication is now the 100th anniversary, dance and life are, or used to be one and the same thing: as increasing richness in the movements of the world, in all early human cultures but also in non-humans. The extinction of dance, now that technics dance for us in algorithmic manner, is the extinction of life. We need to regain the lost movement and body, for a return to the General Dance of life. Proprioception, our lost sense of movement, is the key.

This year the Metahuman Futures Forum takes further last year’s proposals:

  • we share the updated version of the METAHUMAN FUTURES MANIFESTO, for further collective discussion
  • as well as a next turn and take on the ONTOLOGICAL THERAPY – working together on dismantling our arché-taboos.
  • bulding further upon last year’s provocation paper: Del Val, Jaime. 2022. “Trash-Human Unhancement and Planetary Health. Undoing the Planetary Holocaust by Reinventing Movement and the Body: A Manifesto for Cosmic Response-Ability and the Future of Life”. Journal of Posthumanism 2 (1). London, UK:3-30. https://doi.org/10.33182/joph.v2i1.1876.

We will do a longer convivial-experiential METAHUMAN LAB – WORKSHOP (more information soon) around the conference in Skala Eressos, expanding on last year’s experience

  • with the queer, vegan, animal and environmental communities as well as lgtb refugees
  • on movement, building/dwelling and gathering
    • Learning from gatherer cultures and from non-human: architecture and dance
    • choral practices and the dance of life, undoing dance extinction

We will also present the special Issue of the Journal of Posthumanism, as well as books.

Proposals for workshops, performances, book presentations are welcome.

It will be a fully VEGAN event.

Topics:

  • The unacknowledged METAHUMAN revolutions:
      1. Learning from gatherer cultures: the anthropological revolution of the Original Affluent Society that since the 1960’s has dismantled with extensive evidence earlier prejudices and supremacist misconceptions which assumed that gatherers-hunters lived worse than agrarian-urban cultures, exposing that it is the reverse: they have better quality of life, an argument supported by many anthropologists and historians from Suzman (2017, 2020, 2022) to Harari. From this area arguably comes the deepest posthuman revolution which shows that the entire human and planetary drama comes from accumulation and sedentarism, which was not an evolutionary teleology, but a geologic anomaly and accident that needs to be overcome.
        1. relearning gathering techniques.
      2. The 1 million population revolution: all estimations show that for 99% of its existence, till around 10,000 years ago, the Sapiens for under 1 million population, a time during which, as said in previous point, quality f life was generally better than with agriculture and no mass extinction was created, we were on of the 8,7 million species, contributing to global biodiversity. But over the past 10,000 years we multiplied by nearly 10,000 and by 2050 we may reach 10,000 million. The greatest challenge is perhaps going back again to what we always were: one million, how?:
        1. Voluntary antinanalism, liberation from oppressive reproduction norms, voluntary suspension of human multiplication.
        2. Demanding governments to stop promoting families and reproduction, undoing the multiplication thrust of nation sates and Growth economy.
        3. Denouncing and disaligning from Gender binaries and nuclear families as geologic anomaly that drives us to extinction through overpopulation
        4. Promoting Queer and trans-species kinships.
      3. Choral revolution: choral dances have been central to all tribal cultures exposing an unacknowledged richness; it is about the rhythmic fields of aesthetic expression, vital rhythmic richness, embedded in all of life, and as highly rich forms of embodied knowledge and memory that exceed semiosis.
        1. Towards transformative arts of life?
        2. The source of the global crisis is in the impoverished body?
        3. Regaining the dance of life for a planetary regeneration beyond human narratives.
        4. The Body technologies revolution: only what the body can do
      4. The biosphere as mixture and flow, and how our devastating occupation of the earth blocks it. The Dynamism of matter (quantum physics and relativity) and the problem of splitting organic and inorganic. Rights of the Earth against homogenisation and blockage of flows, by appropriation and monocultures.
        1. Non-toxic architectures: undoing our toxic occupation of the earth
          1. The one half problem: we occupy one half of the earth with toxic monocrops and architectures.
      5. Learning from nonhumans: their ethical and kinaesthetic superiority – animals as their movement and the crime to immobilise and enslave them
        1. The Planetary Holocaust, as not only largest killing machine, but the most polluting and devastating one
          1. Farming as the most destructive activity ever to have existed, and the need to stop it.
          2. The urgency for a shift to radical veganism, but not only: agriculture needs to be ended too as it is the main source for our devastating occupation of the Earth.
            1. George Monbiot, in Regenesis, proposes the urgency to end all farming and agriculture as core aspect to combat climate change, and regerenate (rewild) the planet, by shifting to food production through bacteria.
        2. Learning from non humans: architecture, ethics, politics, movement…

          1. The superiority of non-humans as non-destructive, symbiotic species.
      6. Radical Embodied Cognition revolutions. Proprioceprion and BI (Body Intelligence) as shared by all life forms.
        1. Sentience of non-humans.
        2. The proprioceptive revolution of BI (Body Intelligence).
      7. Evolution as primarily symbiosis and mutual aid, not as struggle. (Kropotkin,Margulis, Haraway). Dismantling the capitalistic fallacies of Neo-Darwinism.
        1. Mutual aid as core evolutionary law (following Kropotkin 1902)
        2. Relational ethics.
  • The other revolutions of (mainly) Industrialised (WEIRD) humans, need to become more transversal, more than intersectional, and avoid any human supremacism:
    1. Queer, non binarism, transfeminism, poliamory, sex work public sex and public nudity movements,
    2. radical vegan and earth liberation movements
    3. neurodiverse and crip movements
    4. aboriginal and decolonial, and precarious people movements
  • Human Supremacism as unacknowledged core problem; the archetaboos and the needed ontological therapy
    • Humanity as sect of psycopaths in increasing aliennation?
  • Trash-human unhancement as new critical paradigm (see Del Val 2022)
  • Alternative forms of embodied thinking and thinking as movement, and practices to mobilize it.
  • Are all human rights erected against planetary rights?
    • From Musk/Trump to poor famers in India, how are responsibilities distributed? And how to address all situations introducing the core challenges?
  • Post-trans-meta-trash-humanisms...
    • Critical posthumanists as still too humanists?
    • Transhumans as Trash-humans?
    • Metahumans as symbiotic mutants?
    • Trash-human studies as the new critique?
  • New technofascisms.
    • Radical challenges of Big data culture and autonomous algorithms
  • Beyond East and West, North and South:
    • All forms of dominion since the Neolithic need to be challenged and dismantled
  • Exponentiality and imminence of the crises.
    • Till when are critical intellectuals going to wait to step out of the pedestal of Human Supremacism?
  • Health and culture as questionable supremacist arguments.
  • Care: Towards a new culture of co-sensing and proprioceptive care
  • Precursors? From Lucretius to Nietzsche and beyond.

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Conference Information:

Hybrid format online + on site.

Abstract Submissions: till 20th May 2023 (no extension will be given). Acceptances by 10th may. Please send to:

Evi Sampanikou: esampa@aegean.gr and

Jaime del Val: jaimedelval@metabody.eu

IT IS IMPORTANT TO SEND ABSTRACT TO ALL  + Please indicate whether it is for the BHC (Beyond Humanism Conference) or the MFF (Metahuman Futures Forum) – The 2nd MFF operates this year both as associated event and as section of the 13th BHC focusing on Metahuman/Trash-human studies and topics.

Abstracts dealing with MFF topics will be put in the MFF section. Both BHC and MFF will run in parallel in the same spaces.

Proposals for workshops and performances/metaformances welcome.

 

Accomodation: For university accommodation information will appear on the site later on.

 

Conference fees:

  • 70 euro (early bird – till 31st May)
  • 100 euro (later – after 31st May)

ONLINE speakers: 20 euros

POSTER submissions: 40 euros

 

Bank Information:  https://epos.ru.aegean.gr/?id=718

PAYMENT STEPS:
1. As soon as you enter the platform switch to the english version in case the greek language form appears  (at the upper right of the page).
2. Complete the form with your name and other required details.
3. Choose your “Participation Type”: early bird, online, poster, or later registration
4. Emter the payment details
5. Go on with the registration

 

METAHUMAN LAB

Workshop at Skala Eressos, Lesvos: 26th – 30th June

More information soon: https://metabody.eu/metahuman-lab-lesvos-2023/

 

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Refs.:

Suzman, Jaimes. 2017. Affluence Without Abundance: What We Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Civilisation. Bloomsbury

Suzman, James. 2020. Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time. NY: Bloomsbury

Suzman, James. 2022. Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. Penguin

 

[1] See https://thehill.com/homenews/3723070-un-chief-we-are-on-a-highway-to- climate-hell-with-our-foot-on-the-accelerator/.