Interspecies Futures [IF]

Interspecies Futures [IF] is the first survey of bookworks by leading international practitioners from the contemporary fields of bio-art and speculative design who have turned to the book as a tool for the proposal of alternative human-nonhuman scenarios.

Informed by methods from conceptual art, posthumanism, biotechnology (CRISPR), and emerging interfaces (AI, VR, 3D printing), these artists produce documents that defy the borders between fiction and reality. In their hands field guides, lost diaries, investigative dossiers, lab journals, corporate catalogues become portals into multiple interspecies possibilities.

[IF] introduces practices that cover a large range of positions toward the nonhuman. Some of the books propose new eco-conscious alternatives, as in Non Flowers, 2021 by Thomas Pausz (FR/IS). Other books imply trans-species dreams such as the 2046 diaries of a scientist in Aurelia Immortal, 2017 by Javier Viver (ES). Some works pose new dilemmas, as in Dodo in the Room, 2019 by Ege Kokel (TU/AT), which predicts a wave of de-extinction pets. Some of the futures imagined are collaborative, like the sonic experiments in Transversal is a Loop, 2019 by Saša Spačal (SI). We even find proposals for post COVID-19 realities, as in Kuang-Yi Ku (TW) whose Tiger Penis Project, 2018, imagines the end of wildlife trade in Chinese medicine via lab-grown animal parts; or Noam Youngrak Son (KR), whose Becoming a Bat, 2021, appeals to solidarity with virus-carrying species via a book designed to be perceived primarily by nonhumans.

Designer

Claudia de la Torre (backbonebooks)

Artists

Kuang-Yi Ku
Hypothetical Studios X Designmatter
Institute of Critical Zoologists
Thomas Pausz
Richard Pell (c/o Center for PostNatural History
Kristoffer Ørum
Ege Kökel
Javier Viver
Noam Youngrak Son
Tomás Saraceno
Nonhuman Nonsense
Baum & Leahy (c/o The Institute of Queer Ecology)
Saša Spačal
Nicholas Mangan
Jenna Sutela
Thomas Thwaites
Dougal Dixon
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg