*LASER Paris - April 21st - Special "Roots & Seeds XXI -
Biodiversity crisis and plant resistance" - Alone or in Mound?*
*LASER Paris : "Alone or in Mound?"*
**
Free admission, registration required
*/(https://tinyurl.com/3bedme7t)/*
How to reproduce when you are the last male of your species
and all the females have disappeared?
No science fiction here but the reality of /Encephalartos
woodii/, a tropical plant of the cycad family of which only
one male remained and whose clones live in botanical gardens.
What to do when faced with the loss of a species? Should it
be preserved no matter what, should it be recreated?
*Laura Cinti*, in collaboration with the conservation
scientist *Debbie Jewitt*, went in search of a hypothetical
female in the South African forests where /E. woodii/
originated.
Mounds and heaps are "treasure boxes" for archaeologists but
also for ethnobiologists and conservation specialists.
Between "archive" and "instrument of life evolution", these
piles and heaps are at the heart of the collaboration
between *Marit Mihklepp,*recipient of the Roots & Seeds XXI
Residence - Maison Malina and Meredith Root-Bernstein,
researcher at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, who
will report about their exploration of the Parisian
accumulations, piles and holes.
*"Alone or in Mound?"*
**
*Rencontre LASER Paris*
//
*Thursday April 21st 2022*
*Cité internationale des arts*
(Auditorium)
*18 rue de l'Hôtel de Ville*
*75004 Paris*
19h00 - 21h30
**
https://www.olats.org/**
**
*with **Laura Cinti and Debbie Jewitt ; Marit Mihklepp and
Meredith Root-Bernstein*
Free admission, registration required
(https://tinyurl.com/3bedme7t)
/COVID 19 sanitary measures of the day/
and we start on time!
/This LASER Paris takes place in English/
*Drinks and snacks*after the presentations
(COVID 19 situation permitting)
Audience *announcements* during the break (with registration)
*Programme*
*> **Laura Cinti*, artist and *Debbie Jewitt*, conservation
scientist // */The Living Dead - On the trail of a female
(2022)/*
//
/The Living Dead - On the trail of a female (2022)/is a
biodiversity-focused art-science project searching for a
female mate for one of the rarest plants on Earth, the
extinct-in-the-wild cycad - the /Encephalartos woodii/.
Only one male specimen was found in the Ngoye Forest in 1895
and all specimens, in botanical gardens, are clones derived
from offsets from the only known male plant which was
removed from the wild. Despite excursions in the Ngoye
Forest area, no other specimens of /E.woodii/ have been
found in the wild.
/E. woodii/and the missing female is a dramatic illustration
of how easy it is to lose a species and our biodiversity.
The presentation will discuss the project’s latest mission
utilising remote sensing technologies - drones - to search
for the /E.woodii/ in the Ngoya Forest in South Africa.
*> Marit Mihklepp*, artist**and *Meredith Root-Bernstein*,
Ethnobiologist, ecologist, conservation scientist, CNRS
researcher at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle,
Paris// */Mound network theory of life/***
mound /maʊnd/
1. a large pile or heap of earth, stones, leaves, etc. like
a small hill
2. the most primordial technique
We will be sharing our impressions of our two-week
collaboration while thinking and being with the mounds,
heaps and holes of Paris. Mounds, heaps, and piles, and
their complements, pits, holes and depressions, are the most
primordial form of technique or technology. Accumulations
make possible new materialities, affordances, and
interactions. The making of concentrations in space is a
condition for the evolution of life, and all of ecology can
be described as moving and reshuffling piles of things. The
mound, heap, or pile, is also an epistemological object: it
is an archive. We will be approaching ‘large piles of
something’ both with field work practices from both
ecological and artistic perspectives. We start with finding
and mapping specific mounds, writing field notes, perhaps
making our own mound. In the process we will be asking
questions from the mounds: what kind of knowledge are you an
archive of? What kind of movements are you holding? How did
you get here? How would you make me part of you?.
*Moderator :* Annick Bureaud
*Drinks and snacks* after the presentations (COVID 19
situation permitting)
Audience *announcements* during the break (with registration)
Programme created by Leonardo/ISAST (www.leonardo.info),
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendez-vous,
www.leonardo.info/laser) is a sharing of experiences around
art-science projects in semi-formal meetings, outside the
institutional framework.
LASER Paris is co-organized by Leonardo/Olats and La
Diagonale Paris-Saclay
(http://www.ladiagonale-paris-saclay.fr), in partnership
with the Cité internationale des arts
(https://www.citedesartsparis.net/, the TEAMeD Research Team
(https://teamed.univ-paris8.fr/
<https://teamed.univ-paris8.fr/>) of the University of Paris
8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis and the ArTeC University Research
School (https://eur-artec.fr/ <https://eur-artec.fr/>), with
the support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation
(https://www.fondationcarasso.org/), the program
Investissements d'Avenir and the Creative Europe programme
of the European Union for the project«Roots and Seeds XXI.
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