The transport of plants and animals around the world has become a defining feature of global environmental
change. Many of these species become established outside their native ranges, and some of them impact on species diversity,
change ecosystems and communities, and have direct conseqiences for human livelihoods and health.
In
my talk, I will provide a synthesis of the phenomenon of biological invasions. I will highlight underlying causes, will present
new scientific insights, and will discuss societal implications.
Franz Essl is an Ecologist working at the
University Vienna and the Environment Agency Austria. His main research interest is on improving the understanding of global
environmental change and its consequences for biodiversity and human society. He has published >100 scientific papers including
in high-profile journals such as Nature and Science, has written several text books, and has a strong committment to public
outreach.NATURA NATURANS – IN THE WOODS // Lecture seriesWhich ingredients are necessary
to transform Nature into ‘Natura naturans’–a place wherein bodies strive to enhance their power of activity by forging alliances
with other bodies in their vicinity? (Bennett, J. on Spinoza, 2004)
Presumably, the notion of matter has to change: instead
of postulating inanimate matter which does nothing more than composing the world out of long concatenations of cause and effect
where nothing is supposed to happen (Latour, B. 2010), a “new materialism” installs freedom, movement, creativity in the very
heart of things. What tools might be appropriate to realise this conceptual change from passive to active matter, to transport
various kinds of ingredients into the motley arena of things? Transport and transportation need mediators that import and
export and thus traverse. Metaphor, in facts, means “transport“. And this is a (research)question:
Can metaphors act
as mediators for transportation? Like Gaia, mediators can be human and non-human things that invent but also can betray, that
nourish, but also can be mistaken. Transportation (metaphors) can be the craziest and the most certain – metaphors as messenger
create contradiction and foreignness/otherness that may be the route to invention. (Serres, M., 1995)
This module explores
the transdisciplinary conditions for transportations and their consequences for invention. We meet in the woods, this proud
and humble emblem of nature. And there is a method: “Research in the wild” aims at exploring actors and active entities that
populate this emblematic site. Point of departure of Research in the Wild: the wood as a polluted, impure, composite reality,
and, secluded research in laboratories that risks paralysis if it refuses to cooperate with research in the wild. (Callon,
M., Rabeharisoa, V., 2003) And there is a caveat: when “first” Nature (and the hegemony of scientific knowledge that claims
to define that “first” nature for its own part) starts to lose its monopoly (see e.g. “multinaturalism”), it seems to be fair
to distrust a “second” Nature: Economy as the universal dialect of a globalised world, and, to avoid believing that the Economy
would supply “the unsurpassable horizon” of investigation and nevertheless respect what informants say about the troubles
with subsistence.
There is an aim: to explore and chart a site-specific transdisciplinary trajectory of metaphors: a
model of the fictional existence of a forest area. A time-based chart that encompasses the multiplication of goods and bads,
the production and following organisational scripts, the exploration of the links between ends and means, the
risks of
reproduction. A chart that “animates”.
See also:
www.dieangewandte.at/artscience
