Solar Protocol / Tega Brain (AU), Alex Nathanson (US), Benedetta Piantella (US), Solar Protocol Collective (INT)/Photo: tom mesic

Spotlight on Tega Brain

“We’ve seen enough climate art about grief and loss and mourning. I make art to point to the agency we have in the climate crisis. We need art that experiments with system redesign, degrowth aesthetics and cultivates imaginaries for climate mitigation and adaptation. I also want to see climate art about reaching those most responsible for the crisis. Where’s the art about revenge?”

Eccentric Enginnering

Is critical:

  1. Realises systems rather than representations. But questions what a system can be and can do.
  2. Refigures definitions of utility and productivity.
  3. Looks to the non-technological to guide metaphors and imaginaries for the design and engineering of systems. 4. Favours good enough prediction and minimal computing.

Is post-human:

  1. Draws attention to automations outside of human-machine assemblages.
  2. Seeks to expand who and what gets to enact agency in decision making and events.
  3. Recognizes diverse forms of intelligence that go beyond those of the human or machine.
  4. Designs intra-structures, where systems are understood as negotiations that bring worlds into being.

Supports specific values:

  1. Offers critique through proposition, but works with explicit political commitments.
  2. Takes lessons from Indigenous cosmologies to recognize that design must enact explicit commitments to biodiversity, equality, environmental justice, and the autonomy of other lifeforms.
  3. Recognizes that engineering is a cultural practice. That culture can be engineered and that culture shapes what an engineer does.
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