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Artists in the Okto-Lab

Erin Hortle (AUS) is a creative writer with an ongoing concern in the cultural inscription of the more-than-human world. Her work explores the ways in which creative and experimental writing might facilitate new ways of imagining the non/human. Her novel called The Octopus and I is published by Allen & Unwin.

Hörner/Antlfinger(GER) is a german art collective. Their installations, videos and sculptures deal with the relationship between humans, animals and machines and the utopian vision of fair terms of interaction between these parties. Two protagonists who advise them on this question are the grey parrots Clara and Karl with whom they have carried out the interspecies collaboration CMUK since 2014. Since 2009 they teach at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Loren Kronemyer/Ian Sinclair (Pony Express) (US/AUS) are performance artists currently based in Perth, Western Australia. Loren is pursuing a PhD at the School of Creative Arts, UTAS. Their performance work – Tentaculum, 2018 at IMAS was based on the sensory world of the octopus.

Madison Bycroft (AUS) is a performance artist with an ongoing and diverse interest in cephalopods. Please refer to her webpage for further info.

Michiko Nitta and Michael Burton (UK) Based in London, Burton Nitta is an interdisciplinary art and design studio collaborating with science and technology to investigate our future world and human evolution. Their performances Algaculture and The Algae Opera are of particular interest.

Mike Singe (AUS) is a Tasmanian based artist. His work is represented in major institutions including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Murdoch University, Curtin University and the Kerry Stokes Collection. Singe’s recent work expands his research on the shifting human behaviour and cultural systems in response to the climate change through a focus on air as a material for investigation, particularly air in relation to human (animal) respiration.

mOwson&M0wsen(AUS) comprises of the sculptor lynn mowson and sound/installation artist Bruce Mowson. lynn mowson is a sculptor whose practice is driven by the entangled relationships between human and non-human animals. Lynn is currently vice-chair of the Australasian Animal Studies Association. Bruce Mowson's practices are founded on the experiences of sound and the body. Participation and the experience of the audience have been important to his explorations and research.

Natalie Ryan (AUS) is an artist whose practice explores themes that surround the aesthetic representation of the cadaver and natural sciences throughout Western history and their inclusion in contemporary art. Please refer to her webpage for further info.

NEOZOON (GER) is a female art collective founded 2009 in Berlin and Paris. Their artistic mediums range from collage to installation and film. Recycling found footage is a recurring element.

Rachel Bailey (AUS) is a romance novelist currently undertaking a PhD in creative writing at the University of Tasmania with a focus on the potential for animals to act as protagonists in romance novels.

Tanja Böhme (GER) is an artist with a focus on animal subjectivity and communication. Performance, video and audio are her chosen methods of studio practice. A selection of past group exhibits featuring her work include the Fridericianum in Kassel, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the documentary film festival Kassel DokFest and a guest performance at the Museum for Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt.

Scientists in the Okto-Lab

Alexander Ziegler (GER) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at the University of Bonn. He works on 3-D imaging techniques in animal morphology.

Chelsea Harry (USA) is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. She works in the philosophy of nature with a particular interest in the relationship between theories of nature and concepts of time, focusing on ancient Greek philosophy and late 18th-mid 19th century German philosophy. She is likewise interested in thinking about what kind of relationship humans ought to have with the rest of nature now, in the 21st century.

Felix Sattler (GER) is the curator for the Tieranatomisches Theater – Exhibition Research Space of the Humboldt University Berlin. He develops exhibitions and museological research into display practices about natural and cultural objects and institutional narratives. Since 2017 he is priority research area leader of »Collecting & Exhibiting« at the Cluster of Excellence »Image Knowledge Gestaltung«.

Jayson Semmens (AUS) is associate professor for marine biology, Deputy Associate Director & Cross Disciplinary Research Leader at University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Hobart, AUS). He is a cephalopod expert with interests in their anatomy and behavior by reference to the way that their life histories have been shaped by natural selection.

Martin Hing (AUS) discovered with his partner a site densely occupied by octopuses in 2016. He is working toward a PhD at the University of Wollongong investigating the evolution of sociality in coral reef fishes and volunteers on marine based projects such as Project AIRSHIP – a blimp mounted beach safety system currently in trial phase – and sitting on the Jervis Bay Marine Park Advisory Committee.

Martin Ullrich (GER) is professor for interdisciplinary musicology and human-animal studies at Nuremberg University of Music. His main research area is the function of sound and music in the interdisciplinary context of animal studies.

Peter Godfrey-Smith (AUS) is professor of philosophy of science at University of Sydney (AUS). He is the author of Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and collaborates with biologists on the octopus at the intersection of the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind.

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