Otherwordly Stories/Storie dell’Altro Mondo

public programme, 2022

Otherworldly Stories is a public programme that reinterprets human-plant relationships in terms of co-cultivation to explore alternative configurations of the present. From libraries of natural materials to the cultivated fields of the Venetian Lagoon, from science fiction to seed banks, the events tell us stories of climate catastrophe where the future is not an 'other' world. On the contrary, it is already nested in the now. In transcending the human-climate divide, the contributions reconfigure our place in the world and offer an attempt to rethink preservation beyond human-centric narratives.

The first day focuses on infrastructures and methodologies of cataloguing and preserving the living, embedded within two archives: the seed bank and the natural materials library. Through Jumana Manna’s film and Eugenia Morpurgo’s workshop, the non-human perspective is introduced in these contexts to overcome the binomial technoscience-local traditions.

Day two tells stories of climate catastrophe where the future is not an 'other' world. On the contrary, it is already nested within present realities. A menu responding to rising salinity in the fields of the Venetian Lagoon, curated by Prometheus_open Food Lab, dialogues with examples from science fiction literature and cinema presented by Marco Malvestio. Both events transcend the human-climate divide, offering possible ways reconfigure our place in the world.