Human Animal
PerformancesYou share 70% of your DNA with zebrafish, and a giant sequoia’s genome (more than 8 times larger
than yours) might teach us how to survive. This is an ecopoetry reading/screening dedicated to singular and communal possibilities
of evolutionary and ancestral origins. Inspired by intertidal ocean zones, where animals adapt to live both underwater and
beneath the beating sun, we push at the boundaries of how life and poems can exist. Evolution and family history may at first
glance seem unrelated, but we begin to see planetary, cultural, and familial inheritance as deeply intertwined. In the vexed
filed of lineage, historically used to enforce hegemonic structures, art goes to work. We exist alongside all these creatures
with whom we share a mosaic of structural and genomic remnants—our deep family. Ancient lineages imagine the future.
GuestEleni Sikelianos is the author of nine books of poetry (forthcoming is
Your Kingdom)
and two hybrid memoirs (
The Book of Jon and You Animal Machine). Seven of these have appeared in French and one in
Greek, while excerpts have been translated into other languages. Her writings, influenced by ecopoetics and family and animal
lineages, have been widely fêted and anthologized, and she has received numerous awards, including from the National Endowment
for the Arts and The National Poetry Series.
RegistrationPlease contact
zff@uni-ak.ac.at
if you want to join the sessions on June 2-3, 2022!
