Thomas Pausz’ project Haunted Ecologies will intersect the research fields of media, ecology, and ‘hauntology’ – the understanding that our perception of contemporary environment and culture is always haunted by spectres of the past, and by hopes and visions of the future – to propose immersive installations echoing the transformations of local ecosystems in the vicinity of the Stanley Picker Gallery.
From early wildlife photography to digital sensors signalling the pulse of climate in real-time, the media constellations we design evolve with and change our perception of ecosystems. However, in times of loss of biodiversity and climate change, our relationships with the environment are becoming so ambiguous that they seem to escape our means of representation and experience. Relational modes of presence and cohabitation are crossfading with affects of longing, absence, and loss. The scale and temporality of environmental objects are equally changing, from the human-centered perspective and scale of modernism to microscopic events, fine particles and geological time. We are all like Alice, wondering if she needs to shrink or expand, or both at the same time.
Thomas Pausz is an artist and researcher born in Paris and based in Reykjavik. He graduated from the Royal College of Arts in 2009 after studying philosophy and epistemology of sciences in Paris. Pausz´s fictional ecosystems take various forms to explore unforeseen interactions between humans, non-human life forms, and media. His worldbuilding projects are informed by field research in specific environments, and critical dialogues with researchers in the fields of biology, climate science, and bioethics. Pausz puts a particular emphasis on the design of exotic technologies as a medium to redefine interspecies relations. Can VR for pollinators, software to read sea shells, or ´spectral´ wildlife photography refocus the human gaze and offer poetic spaces, where biological and technological are renegotiated? Recent projects include Making New Land, An Intertidal Aesthetics, an essay in speculative biology published by the Performance Philosophy Journal; Species Without Spaces, a series of documented expeditions reflecting on media representation of endangered ecosystems for the Laboratoire Modulaire (FR), where Pausz is a guest artist in 2022. Previously he was a fellow of the Academy Schloss Solitude (DE), artist in residence at the Politics of Food program at the Delfina Foundation (UK), and member of the interdisciplinary Swamp School (LT).
Recent exhibitions include Interspecies Futures (IF) at Centre for Book Arts, New York; Nature in Transition, Shifting Identities at The Nordic House, Iceland; The Wildflower at Hafnarborg Museum, Iceland; The Swamp Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale; Species Without Spaces at Istanbul Design Biennale 2018; Food: Bigger than the Plate at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London UK and Out of the Sea at Passerelle Contemporary Art Centre Brest, France.