Developed within the framework of the European project More-than-Planet, this year’s theme exhibition, (Co)Owning More-than-Truth, calls for a complete shift in our worldviews, relationships, language, consciousness, and narratives across the planet. From significant signs of climate change to fake news, it is evident that the truths humanity collates on the planet —be they numbers, facts, narratives, voices, or orders of life — are still patchy and biased, with their impacts and consequences varying for individual beings, societies, and nature. While truth is vital for human progress and development, we need more than just truth; we require new sets of actions to transcend beyond human advancements.

(Co)Owning More-than-Truth addresses this point by viewing truth as a pharmacon to navigate current topologies of the knowledge structure, to map them out as dynamic and multifaceted entities and to accommodate the truths that are drifting and shifting. On display are myriads of artworks gliding from truths unearthed from the landscapes, ecosystems and cycle of life in and out of Earth to ground truths of collecting data and processing information to challenge existing regimes of knowledge. Deviating from the quandary of what the truth is and to whom we delegate the right to the truth, (Co)Owning More-than-Truth offers a space where interdisciplinary practices, approaches, and narratives are pluralized to unearth a more profound and inclusive understanding of being together, forging a path towards a consensus of collective efforts for the crises we face as a whole. Through the selected artworks, the exhibition encourages you to question prevailing norms and engage in critical reflections about the complexities of true ownership and its impact on global urgencies through various acts of owning: Navigating, Mapping and Shifting.

Total Conversion
Sasha Litvintseva (GB), Beny Wagner (DE/US)

Total Conversion is a proposition, a question, a method all at once. Rather than answer the questions it asks, the 2-channel video installation sets in motion an open-ended method of being in the world. At the center of the film’s overlapping stories is the question of the human body and how it must constantly intake parts of the world in order to maintain its own life. Does the body become what it eats? Or, as some nineteenth century European scientists believed, and turned into twentieth century common sense, does the body dissolve the world completely into its own material structure?

The installation makes incorporation an issue of physiological, psychological, spiritual, literary and scientific dimensions. It is at once a matter of metamorphosis and decay, the eucharist and epigenetics, the philosophy of matter and imperial conquest, industrialization and annihilation.

This work was realized within the framework of the European Media Art Platform residency program at IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] with support of the Creative Europe Culture program of the European Union. Supported by Queen Mary University of London, University of Southampton, South-West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

This project is funded and presented in the context of the EMAP project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35944