About

The Multispecies Salon II - November 10 - December 6, 2008

Play Space, California College of Arts
AAA Annual Meetings, San Francisco Hilton and Towers

The early 21st century has become the age of global war, free trade, and mass extinction. At this historical moment predictions of total ecosystem collapse are competing with dreams about salvation through technoscientific intervention. Our event will depart from the strange allure of these totalizing visions of salvation/destruction to dwell on modest sites of biocultural hope. We will think with care about people who serve as surrogates, guardians, and spokespeople of non-humans. Our methods involve serious play, curiosity, and risk taking.

During the exhibit stakeholders from different social worlds will come together to discuss the creatures living in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. In collaboration with school children, biologists, and hobbyists co-curators Marnia Johnston and Eben Kirksey will bring organisms from the intimate spaces of labs and homes into the public space of the art gallery. Our exhibit will highlight the ways that plants, animals, and microbes are brought into and excluded from human social worlds. Working with fragile organisms in a foreign space, we will attend to issues relating to care, contact, and contagion.

We have invited seventeen artists into the mix whose work is catalyzing new discussions about encounters between natural and cultural worlds. Staging an interactive discussion among artists, scholars, and other intellectuals in the gallery space will open up opportunities for collaboration across disciplinary divides and social boundaries that rarely get crossed.

Multispecies Salon II Art Show

The art exhibition will explore the worlds of microbes, animals, and plants. Works by artists, scientists, and schoolchildren will be on display from November 10 through December 6 in the PLAySPACE Gallery of the California College of Arts. The event is free and the gallery will be open to the public. Gallery hours are Tuesday 3-7pm, Thursday 3-7pm, and Saturday 12-2pm. The California College of Arts is located at 1111 Eighth Street in the Patrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. For directions to the event, call 800-447-1278.

Special Events at the American Anthropological Association Meetings

The 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), to be held at the San Francisco Hilton and Towers, will have two panels that are connected to our event: "The Multispecies Salon II" and "Species at Sea: Anthropologies of Nonhuman Strangers and Companions." In addition to the formal presentations at the AAA, panelists and interested audience members are invited to an informal workshop at the art exhibit site where three provocateurs will facilitate a discussion of the papers from the AAA multispecies sessions.