Science Friction

The exhibition explores the change from anthropocentrism (a human-centred world view) to biocentrism (the human as part of an ecosystem) explained through the work of the two biologists: Lynn Margulis, whose theory on the role of symbiosis in evolution lays the foundations for a new history of life and Donna Haraway, who focuses on the narrative power of scientific knowledge, on its condition as a worldly “story machine” and our place in it. ¨Science Fiction¨ proposes a change of mentality and sensitivity that questions the supremacy of the human species, opting for a view of the world understood as an ecosystem where all the planet’s species coexist.

The curator Maria Ptqk points out there are two possible views of this exhibition: one pictures the surrounding world as a great symbiotic assembly, meanwhile the other perspective warns us of the urgency to invent other science f(r)ictions, fables or speculative stories, enlarging the imaginable in order to situate humans in the arising interspecies paradigm.

The last piece, the installation Time-Life-Time by Jaime Serra (2021) was especially designed for this event as an independent part of the exhibition´s tour and it reflects the author’s personal view on the nowadays environmental trend. It is both a natural history journey and a thought-provoking dialogue between the installation itself and other elements from popular culture and the media, tracing a journey of paradoxes and unexpected encounters.