Synthetic Life: A future 'Natural History'?
Episodes 19 and 20 of Talking Culture are dedicated to the new action-research initiative 'The Synthetic Sacred', which explores pathways for ecological restoration amidst hybridity. The initiative has been curated by Lucy Rose Sollitt and supported by the Goethe-Institut London.
The notion of 'The Synthetic Sacred' is both a provocation and an attempt to forge sustainable narratives and practices. Weaving together posthuman and Indigenous knowledge systems, the initiative explores the sacred to transform fractured relations with nature and resist capitalist-colonialist extraction and alienation. It proposes the sacred as a framework to guide and detoxify our synthetic creations, ensuring all ecologies flourish.
For this episode, we are joined by Professor of Biology at Tuft's University, Mike Levin, conceptual artist, Agnieszka Kurant, and the Director of the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Johannes Vogel. Together, we explore what becomes of nature when life is synthetic and ask what role biotech can play in ecological restoration.