Nomadic Cosmologies and Fugitive Power – Red Forest Radiograms

This final sonic and experiential conversation navigates the myriad topics raised over the course of Nomadic Cosmologies and Fugitive Power, weaving climate struggles with environmental justice and transformative futures. This closing is also an opening and an invitation to engage with the socio-ecological dimension of energy and people’s resistance against the epistemic injustice that is present in extractivism, datafication and a narrative that claims it cannot be otherwise. It is also a call to celebrate and defend the many forms of life that need space to flourish on their own terms. To mobilize with the overcrossing rebellious rhythms and the ancestrality of resistance.

Weaving the topics of Weaponized Infrastructures or Extractivism and the Lilypad with We will not be the wall, we will not be the ship! Cultures of deportation, border regimes and forced displacements together, this is a call for reflection on how these issues interrelate and collide with how people can live. Extractivism can be understood as the result of a one-directional attention to environments. Capitalist conceptions of economic growth encoded in technologies of engagement, i.e. financialization and datafication impose a brutal rhythm on the organic composition of energy by turning it into a speculative value measured in its propensity to extraction. Freedom of movement and dignified dwelling, as the rights of nature and humans are to be defended for the necessary sustainability and health of an ecosystem.

Weaving the topics of Weaponized Infrastructures or Extractivism and the Lilypad with We will not be the wall, we will not be the ship! Cultures of deportation, border regimes and forced displacements together, this is a call for reflection on how these issues interrelate and collide with how people can live. Extractivism can be understood as the result of a one-directional attention to environments. Capitalist conceptions of economic growth encoded in technologies of engagement, i.e. financialization and datafication impose a brutal rhythm on the organic composition of energy by turning it into a speculative value measured in its propensity to extraction. Freedom of movement and dignified dwelling, as the rights of nature and humans are to be defended for the necessary sustainability and health of an ecosystem.

Researchers Daria di Bello, Charlotte Koch and Ségolène Bulot describe the Italian-French-German project “Women’s Voices in Palermo”, part of the residency program of Kultur Ensemble Palermo and highlight the commonalities with the work created by Red Forests for the German Pavilion: use of podcast, working as a collective and challenging the Eurocentric perspective. Production and Sound Design by Cristina Marras for the Goethe-Institut Mailand.

Your voice is inseparable from your being, your history, your future and is the bridge between your inner and outer worlds. When there is a rift between what you express and how you actually feel, the truest part of you is abandoned. When you free your most authentic and natural voice, it is an act of self love, and essentially you are validating and freeing yourself. You come back into wholeness and integrity with yourself, planting the seeds for true freedom, happiness and joy to bloom.

Andrea Lissoni, artistic director at Haus der Kunst in Munich, talks about his visit of the German Pavilion at the Triennale 2022, focusing on the role of experimental art and new art practice. Production and Sound Design of this interview by Cristina Marras for the Goethe-Institut Mailand.

Despite massive controversy, the construction of the Russian-German natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 has been completed, but its certification process has been halted due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yet the project remains a real and imagined spectre haunting Germany and other countries in the European Union as their desire for (Russian) fossil fuel supplies and commercial investments directly contradicts their desires for environmental and geopolitical security. The devil is in the detail. Produced by Red Forest for Goethe-Institut Mailand.

In this interview Red Forest’s Mijke van der Drift, David Muñoz-Alcántara and Diana McCarty explain the genesis of their “Nomadic Cosmologies and Fugitive Power” at the German Pavilion of the 23rd Triennale Milano. Their work consists of a series of radiograms long about 2 hours each, their role is to engage the listeners asking them to talk back to the problems in their own environment. They also acknowledge the absence of the fourth member of red Forest, Oleksiy Radynski, who is away but contributing to put together more body of knowledge. Production and Sound Design of this interview by Cristina Marras for the Goethe-Institut Mailand.

An immersive, sound rich interview with Radio Raheem cofounder Marco Aimo in which he first outlines Radio Raheem’s philosophy and approach towards art, sound, society and politics, and then explains their involvement with Triennale Milano and specifically the collaboration with Goethe-Institut Milan and Red Forest for the German Pavilion. Production and Sound Design by Cristina Marras for the Goethe-Institut Mailand.

Radio is not only a media-form but also a phenomenon of radiation. Let us think of radio as an emitting action/process where receiving is part of transmitting. An action of radio transmission-reception would be a kind of self-oscillation and the relationship between this action and the audience would be a resonance that enchants our various emotions and moves our bodies. The point of transmission between technology and nature is our body that might temporarily provide an enchanting process where technology, art and our existence resonate together. Produced by Red Forest for Goethe-Institut Mailand.

An immersive, sound rich collage of voices collected and recorded in person at the Triennale Milano. People express their opinion about the Triennale in general, commenting on specific exhibits as well as on the overall theme of this edition, and also express their opinion about the German Pavilion, describing in detail what it looks like and how it can be experienced by visitors. Production and Sound Design by Cristina Marras for the Goethe-Institut Mailand.

Pressures of war, disease, and extraction are changing the world. Lucretius’ poem from 1st Century BC combines such recognisably contemporary faultlines with a philosophy of transformation and shifting social relations. In Lucretius philosophy, matter makes new forms and these new forms are Nature generating itself. The world is an interplay of transformations. Lucretius’ Nature invites us to hold space for the potentiality of flourishing, rather than delimit change through extraction. Ways of worlding are made, but not only by ‘managing humans’ but through all the mattering processes that turn potentialities into actuality – as these are forms of care. Produced by Red Forest for Goethe-Institut Mailand.

In the interwar period, the Soviet geologist and philosopher Vladimir Vernadsky diagnosed the transformation of the scientific thought into a geological force that affects material processes on a planetary scale and one able to transform the planetary biosphere “according to the interests of freely thinking humanity as an organic whole,” and sublate it into the Noosphere — a highly networked sphere of unified human knowledge. Vernadsky claimed that the transition to the Noosphere went utterly unnoticed and unreflected by humanity itself, which led to devastating consequences in the form of two world wars. He passed away just before the Hiroshima bombing, a challenge to his cautious optimism regarding the Noosphere’s future. With cyberwar, this future has arrived and its shifting battlefield is now in Ukraine where the nexus of cyber and nuclear emerged as the symptomatic trace of the runaway Noosphere. Produced by Red Forest for Goethe-Institut Mailand.

In a series of sonic and experiential conversations weaving climate struggles with environmental justice and transformative futures, these nine transmissions warn that the coming storm is a total war against life and offer a call for nourishing pluralistic ways of being in and with the world. The “Red Forest Radiograms” will be transmitted over the duration of the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition “Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries” – on site with the Milan based Radio Raheem, in Germany on the award-winning artists’ radios reboot.fm 88.4 Mhz Berlin and 90.7 Mhz Potsdam and online via the Goethe-Institut. The German Pavilion is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, convened by Red Forest. Produced by Red Forest for Goethe-Institut Mailand.