Papers by Elaine Gan
Social Analysis, 2019
This essay represents an interdisciplinary collaboration between Anna Tsing and Elaine Gan of Ma... more This essay represents an interdisciplinary collaboration between Anna Tsing and Elaine Gan of Matsutake Worlds Research Group. The essay experiments with three concepts—coordination, assemblage, diagram—to articulate a forest in Japan as a gathering of vegetal, fungal, and human temporalities. The essay argues that coordination is key to understanding how differences live together without centralized, human-centered planning.
Journal of Ethnobiology, 2018
This article is part of a special issue on "Feral Dynamics" put together with members of the Aarh... more This article is part of a special issue on "Feral Dynamics" put together with members of the Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA) project led by Anna Tsing.
Abstract: As industrial processes leave much of the planet in ruins, novel encounters are emerging. To study weedy succession in a former brown coal mining area in Denmark, the authors undertake field observations over time and propose renewed attention to natural history. The authors follow mycorrhizal fungi and pine trees as a conjuncture of natural and social histories that enable their colonization of mining spoils. The paper aims to show how natural history might expand studies of interspecies interactions that shape succession in anthropogenic landscapes.
HKW Berlin - Technosphere/Anthropocene Curriculum, 2018
This is a story about the entangled materialities and temporalities of multispecies rice worlds. ... more This is a story about the entangled materialities and temporalities of multispecies rice worlds. A short version is online, published in "Technosphere" magazine of HKW Berlin: https://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/p/c672a2e0-17d3-11e8-bed5-678d0d736c4e
The first working version of this paper was written for "Cultivation: Vegetal Lives, Global Systems, and the Politics of Planting", a wonderful conference organized by Matthew Fuller and Shela Sheikh at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (2016): https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=9530
HKW Berlin - Anthropocene Curriculum, 2017
This short essay was published online as part of HKW - Anthropocene Curriculum.
New Formations, 2018
This article was published in a special issue on "Posthuman Temporalities" in New Formations: A J... more This article was published in a special issue on "Posthuman Temporalities" in New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, Politics, Issue 92, March 2018. The issue was edited by Manuela Rossini and Mike Toggweiler and included contributions from Karen Barad, Michelle Bastian, Claire Colebrook, Elizabeth Freeman, Elaine Gan, and Jean-Paul Martinon.
Environmental Philosophy, Apr 2017
Engineered for fast harvests and high yields through chemicals, miracle rice triggered a green re... more Engineered for fast harvests and high yields through chemicals, miracle rice triggered a green revolution throughout Southeast Asia and one of the largest anthropogenic disturbances to the nitrogen cycle in the twentieth century. This article considers the green revolution as an event of more-than-human temporalities, an aleatory formation of vegetal, animal, chemical, and human coordinations that has become a world-changing conjuncture. I present the formation as an unintended race— that is, an interplay of differential speeds. I offer a countermodernist account of structural transformation, doing history otherwise, to challenge anthropocentric narratives of progress and call attention to contingent multispecies coordinations that drive modernity's acceleration.
World of Matter, 2015
This essay is a companion piece to Gan's art installation "Rice Child (Stirrings)" which was inst... more This essay is a companion piece to Gan's art installation "Rice Child (Stirrings)" which was installed at the World of Matter exhibition at Hartware Medienkunstverein (HMKV) in Dortmund Germany. The essay discusses how particular varieties of rice emerge from entangled temporalities of technology, history, memory, and matter.
View images of the installation at http://elainegan.com/riceDarc.html
This is a short essay that is situated at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. The essay was... more This is a short essay that is situated at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. The essay was published in an anthology, "Elemental: An Arts & Ecology Reader," edited by Krista Lynes (London: Cornerhouse Publications, 2016)
Third Text, 2013
This is a short essay that distinguishes between temporalities of high-yield commercial rice prod... more This is a short essay that distinguishes between temporalities of high-yield commercial rice production and pondfield rice terraces. The essay is part of a special issue of "Third Text" that brings together media artists and theorists who are studying resource ecologies in different locations and through different analytical lenses. The essay appears on pp. 86-88.
Provisoes, uma conferencia visual, 2013
Notes on picturing a landscape as a manifold of temporalities; images and text are taken from a p... more Notes on picturing a landscape as a manifold of temporalities; images and text are taken from a paper presented at "Provisoes", a visual conference organized by Mabe Bethonico at Museu de Arte da Pampulha in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (April 2012).
This paper discusses the concept of procedural content generation-based (PCG-based) game design a... more This paper discusses the concept of procedural content generation-based (PCG-based) game design as a way to create new kinds of playable experiences. We examine the different ways that PCG is currently used in games, and how that use impacts the meaning of the game and the player's experience. Finally, we discuss the design and implementation of an experimental PCGbased 2D platformer called Rathenn, which provides the player with control over the level they are playing while they explore both the physical and generative spaces of the game.
Books by Elaine Gan
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, 2017
Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. This timely anthology calls o... more Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. This timely anthology calls on twenty eminent humanists and scientists to revitalize curiosity, observation, and transdisciplinary conversation about life on earth.
As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, this group puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch.
Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.
Conference Presentations by Elaine Gan
Kunsthal Aarhus, 2015
Catalogue for an art and science exhibition, "DUMP! Multispecies Making and Unmaking," co-curated... more Catalogue for an art and science exhibition, "DUMP! Multispecies Making and Unmaking," co-curated by Elaine Gan, Sarah Lookofsky, and Steven Lam at Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark, 2015. The exhibition included interdisciplinary works by Amy Balkin, AURA, Lothar Baumgarten, Mabe Bethonico, Bob Braine-Mark Dion-Alexis Rockman, Patty Chang, Delft University of Technology, Peter Fend, Fernando Garcia-Dory, Jacqueline Goss, Tue Greenfort, Henning Knudsen and Anna Tsing, Dana Sherwood, Asa Sonjasdotter, Spurse, Kidlat Tahimik, Cecilia Vicuna, Pawel Wojtasik, and The Yes Men.
View images of the exhibition: http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programmes/dump-multispecies-making-and-unmaking
View workshop: http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programmes/dump-multispecies-making-and-unmaking#overlay=en/programmes/dump-workshop
Calls by Elaine Gan
We invite STS practitioners, interdisciplinary and decolonial artists-scholars, indigenous and qu... more We invite STS practitioners, interdisciplinary and decolonial artists-scholars, indigenous and queer participants, and assemblage thinkers-activists to submit proposals for the 2019 Making & Doing program at the 4S conference, to be held between 4 and 7 September in New Orleans.
We would love to see proposals that enrich and complicate what it means to “make” and “do” in times of massive environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change. Expanding on Making & Doing itself, what might it mean to “make do”—that is, to challenge the modernist belief in a Technoscientific Fix and the neoliberal fallacy that more is always better? What might it mean to “make do” in New Orleans, a site that grounds us all in both vibrant and brutal histories and futurities?
To address these questions, we invite 4S members to present experimental works in any medium that engage speculative, empirical, reflexive and/or aesthetic approaches to the study of science and technology, broadly defined. Works might take the form of sonic ethnographies, experimental videos, diagrams, interactive games, durational performances (by humans or other species), virtual/augmented reality applications, immersive projections, cooking demos, or other interventions, mundane patches, and critical apparatuses that exceed the printed page.
We look forward to your proposals and provocations!
Endre Dányi, Elaine Gan, Jen Henderson
Organizing Committee for Making & Doing
Book Reviews by Elaine Gan
Science & Technology Studies, 2019
Published in Science & Technology Studies journal, this is a review article of "Our Lives with El... more Published in Science & Technology Studies journal, this is a review article of "Our Lives with Electric Things", an online collection of essays co-edited by Jamie Cross, Simone Abram, Mike Anusas, and Lea Schick for Fieldsights, Society for Cultural Anthropology (December 2017).
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Papers by Elaine Gan
Abstract: As industrial processes leave much of the planet in ruins, novel encounters are emerging. To study weedy succession in a former brown coal mining area in Denmark, the authors undertake field observations over time and propose renewed attention to natural history. The authors follow mycorrhizal fungi and pine trees as a conjuncture of natural and social histories that enable their colonization of mining spoils. The paper aims to show how natural history might expand studies of interspecies interactions that shape succession in anthropogenic landscapes.
The first working version of this paper was written for "Cultivation: Vegetal Lives, Global Systems, and the Politics of Planting", a wonderful conference organized by Matthew Fuller and Shela Sheikh at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (2016): https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=9530
View images of the installation at http://elainegan.com/riceDarc.html
Books by Elaine Gan
As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, this group puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch.
Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.
Conference Presentations by Elaine Gan
View images of the exhibition: http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programmes/dump-multispecies-making-and-unmaking
View workshop: http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programmes/dump-multispecies-making-and-unmaking#overlay=en/programmes/dump-workshop
Calls by Elaine Gan
We would love to see proposals that enrich and complicate what it means to “make” and “do” in times of massive environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change. Expanding on Making & Doing itself, what might it mean to “make do”—that is, to challenge the modernist belief in a Technoscientific Fix and the neoliberal fallacy that more is always better? What might it mean to “make do” in New Orleans, a site that grounds us all in both vibrant and brutal histories and futurities?
To address these questions, we invite 4S members to present experimental works in any medium that engage speculative, empirical, reflexive and/or aesthetic approaches to the study of science and technology, broadly defined. Works might take the form of sonic ethnographies, experimental videos, diagrams, interactive games, durational performances (by humans or other species), virtual/augmented reality applications, immersive projections, cooking demos, or other interventions, mundane patches, and critical apparatuses that exceed the printed page.
We look forward to your proposals and provocations!
Endre Dányi, Elaine Gan, Jen Henderson
Organizing Committee for Making & Doing
Book Reviews by Elaine Gan
Abstract: As industrial processes leave much of the planet in ruins, novel encounters are emerging. To study weedy succession in a former brown coal mining area in Denmark, the authors undertake field observations over time and propose renewed attention to natural history. The authors follow mycorrhizal fungi and pine trees as a conjuncture of natural and social histories that enable their colonization of mining spoils. The paper aims to show how natural history might expand studies of interspecies interactions that shape succession in anthropogenic landscapes.
The first working version of this paper was written for "Cultivation: Vegetal Lives, Global Systems, and the Politics of Planting", a wonderful conference organized by Matthew Fuller and Shela Sheikh at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (2016): https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=9530
View images of the installation at http://elainegan.com/riceDarc.html
As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, this group puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch.
Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.
View images of the exhibition: http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programmes/dump-multispecies-making-and-unmaking
View workshop: http://kunsthalaarhus.dk/en/programmes/dump-multispecies-making-and-unmaking#overlay=en/programmes/dump-workshop
We would love to see proposals that enrich and complicate what it means to “make” and “do” in times of massive environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change. Expanding on Making & Doing itself, what might it mean to “make do”—that is, to challenge the modernist belief in a Technoscientific Fix and the neoliberal fallacy that more is always better? What might it mean to “make do” in New Orleans, a site that grounds us all in both vibrant and brutal histories and futurities?
To address these questions, we invite 4S members to present experimental works in any medium that engage speculative, empirical, reflexive and/or aesthetic approaches to the study of science and technology, broadly defined. Works might take the form of sonic ethnographies, experimental videos, diagrams, interactive games, durational performances (by humans or other species), virtual/augmented reality applications, immersive projections, cooking demos, or other interventions, mundane patches, and critical apparatuses that exceed the printed page.
We look forward to your proposals and provocations!
Endre Dányi, Elaine Gan, Jen Henderson
Organizing Committee for Making & Doing