3rd Metahuman Futures Forum – Lesvos – 2024

+ 3rd Metahuman Lab

+ 6 Workshops, by Stelarc, Jean-Marc Matos and More + Exhibition and More

28th May- 4th June 2024, in Lesbos, Greece

¿Ending the Age of Denialism?

Planetary Holocaust, Human Supremacism, and Extinction.

Towards a Metahuman Justice and Freedom for all Life Forms.

A Meta-academic Metahumanities Encounter.

Full UPDATED Programme Booklet (pls click here, not on poster image): PDF

30 participants from 4 continents (Europe, North America, Asia, Australia) and 13 countries (Greece, Turkey, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, UK, USA, Canada, China, Australia) .

8 days of activities: a Conference with 30 talks, 6 workshops, a three days Lab, an Exhibition and a Metaformance.

Guest Speakers: Stelarc, Yunus Tuncel, Christine Daigle, Patrica MacCormack, Francesca Ferrando, Mark Coeckelbergh, Theresa Schubert, Agostino Cera, Emma Bigé, Cagdas Dedeoglu, Luciano Zubillaga, Pablo Calvo de Castro.

It is again a fully VEGAN i.e. “Holocaust Free” event.

Hybrid format: online & in-person – all sessiones streamed and recorded

STREAMING LINKS – all sessions stay recorded here

Exhibition catalogues: pdf1 – pdf2

Performance calalogue: here

Video of performance: here

Video of workshop with the refugee community: here

>>>Picture and Video Galleries

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28th-30th May – Metahuman Lab

At the Queer Festival hosted by Ohana Collective and Ranch, in Skala Eressou, Lesvos, Greece

31st May – Workshops

1st & 2nd June – Conference

3rd-4th June –  Other activities

Ongoing Exhibition

In the University of the Aegean. Department of Cultural Tecnology and Communication, Geography Building, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece

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Part of the TRASH-HUMAN & METAHUMAN STUDIES programme.

Part of the Metahumanities Network & Metahuman Futures Forum Series,

Part of the BODYNET-KHORÓS  project: BODYNET-KHORÓS FORUM 6.

 Organising Committee: Jaym*/Jaime del Val (Reverso/Metabody), Joaquín Fernández-Mateo (Unversidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid), Aleksandra Łukaszewicz (Lodz University, Poland)

Local Organising Committee and Hosting: Evi Sampanikou, Nikolitsa Gourgouli, and the Mytilene Bodynet-Khorós Project Team,  University of the Aegean.

Advisory Board of theMetahumanities Network (frame for the Metahuman Futures Forum series and for Metahuman Studies): 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.

Metahumanities Network: With the support of the Metabody Network and with the following Associated networks: the Beyond Humanism Network, the  World Posthuman Society, the Global Posthuman Network, The Posthuman Lab.

METAHUMAN STUDIES DIRECTORY

PROGRAMME

8 topic strands, transversal to all panels (see abstracts section below)

        1. UNDOING HUMAN SUPREMACISM – ECOLOGIES OF BECOMING AND JOYFUL DISAPPEARANCE ACROSS AND BEYOND VEGANTINATALISM
        2. CHALLENGING TECHNO-SUPREMACIST COLONIALISM
        3. METAHUMAN JUSTICE AND FREEDOM FOR ALL LIFE FORMS
        4. RADICAL ECOLOGY – BEYOND THE AGE OF PLANETARY HOLOCAUST
        5. NEW AND OLD SENSIBILITIES AWAY FROM THE EXTINCTION THRUST
        6. VEGETAL PARADIGM SHIFTS
        7. DANCES FOR PLANETARY HEALTH
        8. CONTESTABLE FUTURES AND THE BODY

 

Tuesday 28th – Thursday 30th May

METAHUMAN LAB at Skala Eressos – Queer festival

  • 28th vegan cooking, visit to the Donkey Centre and evening interactive projections by the sea
  • 29th morning workshops at Ohana Ranch + beach session before sunset
  • 30th nomadic sessions gathering plants, inhabting environments from Kroussou to Sigri and the petrified forest, and collaboration with the animal Sanctuary, Donkey Centre

 

Friday 31st May

10’00am- 4pm – Stelarc – Performance WORKSHOP  From Extreme Bodies To Virtual Selves: Sumo, Butoh, Robots &Avatars

5’00-6’30pm – Jean-Marc Matos – WORKSHOP  – Focale-Z: Interactive body-image workshop

7’00-8’30pm – Anthi Kosma & Stamatis Tsimpidis – WORKSHOP:  Is it a Monster? Challenging Artistic Habitus, Bias, and Neglect for Metahuman Approaches. – ONLINE

 

Saturday 1st June

9’30 – Opening – Welcome by Organisers and host, and introduction to the MFF and the Bodynet- Khorós Project.

10’00

  • Stelarc – Excess And Indifference: The Problematics Of Presence
  • Anna Hatziyiannaki – Stelarc: Sculpting the Posthuman Body —- ONLINE—-GREECE
  • Evi Sampanikou – Stelarc in Time. Metahumanist Reflections

12’00

  • Michela Bloisi. Beyond the imposition of form: rethinking contact through Contact Improvisation
  • Jean-Marc Matos. Reflections on the future of the “human”
  • Evi Sampanikou & Anna Markopoulou – Le monde sans fin(A world without ending). A Metahumanist reading of a popular graphic novel

2’00 pm –   LUNCH

3’00 pm

  • Theresa Schubert – mEat me (on vulnerability and the de-centering of the Human as Material) —–ONLINE —GERMANY
  • Agostino Cera – Earthmasters as Caregivers. Theoretical Issues (and ehtical Paradxes) from the “Terra Incognita”
  • Emma Bigé in dialogue with Jaym del Val – On Mouvementements and Radical Movement Philosophy: moving across dance, activism and transfeminist ecology——ONLINE —FRANCE

5’00 pm

  • Christine Daigle – Vulner—ability, Affirmative Empathy, and Joyful Extinction—–ONLINE—-CANADA
  • Pablo Calvo de Castro – Representations of the native peoples as references for contemporary society. —– ONLINE—SPAIN
  • Ipek Kuran – Expedition: Toward Symbiotic Integration of Living Systems in Architectural Design
  • Anastasios Tsakaliades-Sotirakoglou – (Un)denying the Death Drive: The language of flowers as critique towards the biopolitical paradigm

7’00 pm

  • Lake Angela – Dance, FSL, and Schizophrenia-Spectrum Language Tributes to “La Louve” and “Savior Hawk” ——-ONLINE——USA
  • Francesca Ferrando – The Art of Being Posthuman ——– ONLINE—- USA
  • Anna Markopoulou – Vivi Zangoyianni –Nikolitsa Gourgouli – WORKSHOP: The Notion of Digital Wellbeing from a Metahumanist Perspective

9’30 pm – DINNER – in town – vegan, with local specialities

 

Sunday 2nd June

9’30 – coffee

10’00

  • Marcus Ten Low – The Compound Effects Of Kindness.——–ONLINE—–AUSTRALIA
  • Luciano Zubillaga – Animate and inanimate beings of the planet rise: the age of Expanded Telepathy[1], Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) and AI ————ONLINE—–CHINA
  • Patricia MacCormack. The Difficult Joy of Death Activism: PostHuman Life and Death

12’00

  • Joaquín Fernández-Mateo – Nonanthropocentric responsibilities in the Technocene: the case of wild animal suffering
  • Jaym*/Jaime del Val – Reversing Supremacist-Denialist Philosophy: Metahuman Justice and Freedom for all life forms. Or Deep Degrowth: Metabiosis, Body Intelligence, nomad gathering and the undoing of the disaster of exploitative civilization.
  • Workshop & Debate – Ontological Therapy & Disalignments & Metahuman Futures Debate – conducted by Jaym del Val – Undoing academic supremacism, or can the academy become a transformative force?

2’00 pm – LUNCH

3’00 pm

  • Evi Stamou – Not Unlike a plant: What humans can learn from vegetal observing. Art and embodied practices inspired by floral collectivism.
  • Ioanna-Maria Stamati – 4B Movement: The Gap Between the Blame and the Becoming
  • Nikolitsa Gourgouli. The Posthuman and Metahuman post-anthropocene garment: Reflecting new approaches on dressing
  • Evangelia Kavakli, Evi Sampanikou, Vivi Zangogianni, Despoina Kaviri, Nikolitsa Gourgouli, Anna Markopoulou – Reimagining Digital Well-being: Insights from Digital Natives in the Metahuman Era

5’00 pm

  • Mark Coeckelbergh – AI and Democracy ——–ONLINE—-AUSTRIA
  • Panagiota Georgopoulou – The modern dualism of freedom and nature. Tracing its religious and socio-political roots
  • Cagdas Dedeoglu – Confronting Transhumanist Colonialism: The Premise of ‘Political Posthumanism’ ———-ONLINE——-CANADA
  • Yunus Tuncel. Affect, Affectivity and the Role of Arts in the Face of Planetary Holocaust —————– ONLINE—-TURKEY

7’00 pm

  • Thomas Nail (ONLINE) and Evi Sampanikouin dialogue with the author: Presentation of the book Ontohackers by Jaym* del Val.
  • Rouddy Kimpioka presenting the activities of RADMusic International, with refugee communities in Lesvos.
  • Closing Debates, remarks, and announcements

9’30 pm – Metaformance – Jaym* del Val – Extinction – Outdoors, from the amphitheatre to the sea

10’30 pm Informal dinner by the sea

 

Monday-Tuesday 3rd-4th June

WORKSHOPs – collaboration with RADMusic International and Refugee communities. As well as workshops on plant gathering in the surroundings with Joan Caronil, and other sessions to be announced at the Teriade Museum.

More information soon.

 

ONGOING

  • EXHBITION by Joan Caronil with collaboraton of Maria Asimakopoulou – Ocean´s soul RECONSTITUTION
  • FILM SCREENING curated by Evi Stamou

 

 

3rd METAHUMAN LAB

In Skala Eressou, Lesbos – Hosted by Ohana Collective and the Queer Festival – 28th-30th May

At the METAHUMAN/METASEXUAL/METABODY LAB is a convivial-experiential lab where we explore ways of being/moving/becoming in the world that may help undo the planetary catastrophe that human dominion has created over the past 10 millennia. Challenging ruthlessly all forms of oppression, non-human and human, their interrelations and underlying concepts (of species, gender, race, ability, etc.) we propose new experiences for regaining a lost sense of symbiosis and becoming, through an original mix of theory and somatic/movement practices (so called Metabody techniques) with and without new media, linked to novel explorations of the world that regain the knowledge of nomad gatherers, under guidance of non-binary non-human artist-philosopher-activist Jaym* del Val (Spain), promoter of the metabody techniques and metahumanist philosophy, as well as choreographer Jean-Marc Matos (France), and theorists Patricia MacCormack (UK), and Aleksandra Lukaszewicz (Poland). This third lab in Skala Eressou, hosted again by Ohana Collective, is for the first time integrated in the Queer Festival organised by the Ohana collective. It involves vegan cooking, collaborations with animal sanctuaries amd local communities, and nomad wandering and self-rewilding.

  • 28th May vegan cooking, visit to the Donkey Centre and evening interactive projections in the village, by the sea, by Ohana Saloon
  • 29th May morning workshop at Ohana Ranch (theory/ontological therapy & disaligned movement/Body Intelligence practices) + informal beach session before sunset
  • 30th May informal nomadic sessions gathering plants, nomadically exploring the surroundings, selfrewilding, from Kroussou to Sigri and the petrified forest, and collaboration with the animal Sanctuary, Donkey Centre. And participation on the Queer Festival Ohana Ranch Party!

 

CFP

DEADLINE: 31st March

¿Ending the Age of Denialism?

Planetary Holocaust, Human Supremacism, and Extinction.

Towards a Metahuman Justice and Freedom for all Life Forms.

The most striking fact about the current extinction crisis, whose most imminent but not only threat is Climate Change, besides the crisis itself, is the denialism of it practiced by humanity at large, including most of Academia and critical intellectuals, even in many fields of posthumanist thinking. Anthropocentrism seems to reign supreme, entering through the backdoor even there where beyond humanism discourses are proposed. The challenging of the totality of modes of destructive living enacted by certain dominant strands of the Sapiens since at least the Neolithic seems to be still a taboo, even for critical thinkers and many social, queer, environmental, and animal activists. This includes, of course, the denialism of denialism itself.

Since 2022 the MFF has been proposing an integrative frame for understanding the interrelatedness of all aspects of the crises unleashed by human dominion over the past millennia, and to do so without concessions to the human supremacism that,  either bluntly or under cover, still seems to reign supreme in other circles. In this 3rdedition of the MFF we aim to bring the discussion further by focusing on the issue of denialism, including more specifically the mechanisms by which denialism reaffirms itself within circles of supposed critical thinking and in the academia, amongst others.

Reaching out toward meta-academic criticality and transdisciplinary life practices and knowledges, and against human supremacist indoctrination and fanatism, the EU project that serves as frame for the MFF, Bodynet-Khorós, further instigates the activation of techniques of living and thinking that by far exceed any form of eurocentric, logocentric, verbocentric, academic supremacism: from indigenous knowledges to novel embodied choral practices and gathering techniques, for a metahuman mutation and a liveable future.

In words of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday 7th November 2022 at COP[1] 27 “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator […] 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. The challenge is that all life on earth needs to be equally taken care of.  There are no human rights without the rights and freedom of all other life forms.

Human health and rights = Animal health and rights = Planetary health and rights.

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

 

FORUM Topics:

  • What is metahumanism.
    • Metahumanist philosophy, aesthetics and politics.
    • Meta-academic metahumanities.
    • Metahumanist philosophy, aesthetics and politics as opposing transhumanism, hyperhumanism, and all forms of human supremacism and techno-supremacism.
    • Metahumanist philosophy, aesthetics and politics as taking further critical posthumanism.
    • Metahuman Precursors?
      • From Presocratics and Lucretius through Nietzsche to post-Deleuzians and beyond.
  • The problem of denialism:
    • in society,
    • in activism,
    • in academia and critical thinking;
    • the associated problem of human and academic selfreferentiality,
    • and of implicit or explicit human supremacism and academic supremacism;
    • the academy as part of the extinction system and of human supremacist knowledge.
    • How to bring the academy beyond itself towards meta-academic metahumanities: as symbiotic practices of living.
    • Challenging academic denialism: Till when are critical intellectuals going to wait to step out of the pedestal of Human Supremacism?
  • Metahuman care, justice, freedom, rights, life, health, and wellbeing for all life forms.
    • Metahuman care and justice for all life forms as condition for a liveable future.
    • Towards an integrative frame of justice and care for all life forms.
    • Interrelation of planetary health, animal health and human health, and of health with freedom and wellbeing.
    • Towards new metahuman politics for all life forms.
    • Towards new metahuman aesthetics for a total art of living and of life transformation.
      • Metahuman metaformance aesthetics.
  • The ignored aspects of the Extinction Crises:
    • Human supremacism, dominion and the Planetary Holocaust
      • non human animals and other life forms: farm animals, wildlife, plants, ecosystems and all life forms.
      • the Planetary Holocaust, as not only largest killing machine, but the most polluting and devastating one
      • interrelation of planetary health, wildlife health and farm animal health, and incompatibility of farms with wellbeing.
    • Human occupation of the Earth and the excesses of sedentary civilization,
      • the environmental and climate crises.
    • Human multiplication and the counter-evolutionary nature of heteronormative regimes of reproduction.
      • human oppression as effect of dominion over other life forms,
      • undoing or challenging binary notions,
      • critical approaches to all meanings and nuances of «gender» as well as post-gender and (post-)queer theories.
    • Exponentiality and imminence of the crises.
  • Trash-human unhancement, hyperhumanism and the real faces of transhumanist culture as human supremacism and denialism:
    • The dominant human as a menace and virus to the planet and other species.
    • Human Supremacism as unacknowledged core problem; the arche-taboos and the needed ontological therapy.
    • Are all human rights erected against planetary rights?
    • Critical posthumanists as still too humanists?
    • Transhumans as Trash-humans?
    • Metahumans as symbiotic mutants?
    • New technofascisms. Radical challenges of Big data culture and autonomous algorithms.
    • Technophilia as supremacism promising solutions to everythng hiding business as usual.
    • Health and culture as questionable supremacist arguments.
  • The unacknowledged METAHUMAN revolutions:
    • 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.
    • 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. Demanding governments to stop promoting families and reproduction, undoing the multiplication thrust of nation sates and Growth economy.
      2. Voluntary antinanalism, liberation from oppressive reproduction norms, voluntary suspension of human multiplication.
      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.
    • 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. Alternative forms of embodied thinking and thinking as movement, and practices to mobilize it.
      2. Towards transformative arts of life?
      3. The source of the global crisis is in the impoverished body?
      4. Regaining the dance of life for a planetary regeneration beyond human narratives.
      5. The Body technologies revolution: only what the body can do
    • Radical Embodied Cognition revolutions.Proprioceprion and BI (Body Intelligence) as shared by all life forms. (Jaime)
      1. From consiousness/mind to moving body.
      2. Sentience of non-humans.
      3. Transspecies kinships.
      4. The propricoetive revolution of BI
    • Learning from nonhumans: their ethical and kinaesthetic superiority – animals as their movement and the crime to immobilise and enslave them
      1. learning architecture from animals
    • Evolution as primarily symbiosis and mutual aid, not as struggle. (Kropotkin,Margulis, Haraway). Dismantling the capitalistic fallacies of Neo-Darwinism.
    • 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. Nontoxic architectures: undo or toxic occupation of the earth – the one half problem
      2. Relational ethics
    • The physics and cosmology revolution
      1. the dynamism of matter.
    • The other revolutions of (mainly) Industrialised (WEIRD) humans, need to become more transversal, more than intersectional, and avoid any human supremacism:
      1. Queer, non binary, 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

Conference Information:

Hybrid format online + on site.

Abstract Submissions: till 31st March 2024 (no extension will be given). Acceptances by 15th April.

Please send to: Jaime del Val – jaimedelval.reverso@gmail.com

Proposals for workshops and performances/metaformances are welcome.

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Forum fees: with 100% discount due European Project framework

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