Monument of Posthumanism

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The work is a result of a several years of exploring the non-human agency, potential and motivations. Involving machines, computational process and natural actants in my work has become part of my works’ signature. Here though, I wanted to give away the control of the work completely and have the non-human build the tribute to itself, according to itself.

Giving it a bit more thought over the time, the idea turned out to be fairly biased and anthropo-morphic (if not anthropocenteric) from the very beggining. It still was my own project with my own assumptions, possibilities and limitations. Still, I decided to follow that train of thought. I did have change trains half way through and as a result arrive somewhere completely different than planned.

Monument of posthumanism
Michal Mitro
Monument of posthumanism
Michal Mitro
Monument of posthumanism
Michal Mitro

Since I couldn’t erase myself from the creational process, I’ve updated the conceptual basis of what the Posthumanism may stand for. As a result, the materiality of the works shifted as well. At this point, I no longer believed that “the world after humans” omits humans. Instead, I imagine the inter-species hierarchy becoming more horizontal. In some cases, the techné or the nature may just be in a better position to act (or not), decide and evaluate. As they already are in many ways. After humanism, people may simply want to make space for other-than-people, demonstrating mutual respect and acknowledgment of our very human limitations.

The humans will, no doubt, make every effort to continue the planetary hegemony. More probably than not, however, we will hit that obvious yet invisible wall one day and will have to admit, that the image of the planet as is now framed just cannot hold any longer. I see Posthumanism as a shift towards more respectful and more inclusive approach to every and all actant that is not human, and to everything and everyone that doesn’t seem to serve human goals in any obvious way.

I was unable to discover, source or create non-human intelligence, that would both design and execute tribute to its very self. Even if created an autonomous algorithm or set up AI network to oversee the process it would still be my initial human involvement that frames the work as a whole. I thus gave up the idea of erasing humans from Post-humanism and instead tried to acknowledge and vocalise our stance in the whole process plainly and sincerely.

Installation view at Orthodox Synagogue, Kosice, Slovakia, September 2022

Eventually, I designed the first monument myself and asked other people that I knew have interest in exploring and understanding other-than-human worlds to imagine what would Monument of Posthumanism look like according to them.
My imagination blended the algorithmic and technological processes with the organicity of the natural growth. Agrnoauts collective decided that the monument should perhaps be the artefact the Agronaut left when landing on the planet. Juraj Rattaj suggests that the German Shepherd may be a good proposal for the Monument.

The resulting sculptures appropriate these suggestions. Mine was conceived as a translation of the perfectly square column into coral-like structure by means of Voronoi algorithm. Agronauts collective’s artefact – the fabric stratched across tent sticks planted outdoors in a dry valley – was to mark the beginning of human’s shift towards organic, bodily, and feral. The shepherd was to represent the appropriation and aculturalisation of the feral while at the same time working in the opposite direction – brining humans to appreciate, respect, relate to and rely on the non-human. With every Monument, there was one more actor that commented on it constantly. The 3d printer itself (based on open source Hangprinter 3) added its own signature to the otuput by introducig glitches and imperfections that actually gave it the sense of aesthetic agency which was both geometric and wild, and most definitely non-human.