PCAI is glad to share news on the participation of collection artists Manthia Diawara and James Bridle in Serpentine’s Infinite Ecologies Marathon: The Prelude on October 14, 2023. This event is a prelude to an upcoming festival in July 2024 – the Infinite Ecologies Marathon, which marks the ten-year anniversary of the Extinction Marathon. Both Infinite Ecologies gatherings aim to seek agency in the current times of crisis, focusing on what must be witnessed, remembered and held in facing a climate breakdown which is unequally distributed between different persons, human and non-human alike.
This afternoon and evening event gathers key figures across disciplines – including Marina Abramović, James Bridle, Manthia Diawara, Lina Ghotmeh, Daisy Hildyard, Nabihah Iqbal, Gabriela De Matos, Jojo Mehta, Tomás Saraceno, Yinka Shonibare, Nikolaj Schultz, Natsuko Uchino, Adrián Villar Rojas and Johannes Vogel – to address pressing questions and answer the prompts:
What is underrepresented on the environmental agenda today?
What is not yet on the agenda, but will be in the near future?
Interventions at this Prelude event will set the agenda for the July 2024 Marathon, and for Serpentine’s actions in the lead-up to it. Seeking to surface and investigate more underrepresented subjects in the struggle for environmental justice and balance, the Prelude is also part of a Serpentine Ecologies research methodology concerned with multiplicity, and a collective commitment to reparative and just environmental action. The Infinite Ecologies Marathon and Prelude build on Serpentine’s longstanding commitment to artist-led, systems-focused ecological research and initiatives, from the Extinction Marathon (2014) to General Ecology (since 2018) and Back to Earth (2020-2022).
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director; Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Ecologies; and Kostas Stasinopoulos, Curator, Live Programmes; with Sarah Hamed, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions and Eva Speight, Curatorial Assistant, Live Programmes.
Image credit: Manthia Diawara, A Letter from Yene (still), 2022. Film. Commissioned by Serpentine, MUBI and PCAI Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative, as part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth project. Courtesy of the artist and Maumaus / Lumiar Cité, Lisbon
