PLEIN AIR TALKS 6. NANO SPECTACULAR SPACE with Jessika Khazrik

“On the (Dark) Unity of Science, Cosmography and Nano Spectacular Space”

A lecture by Jessika Khazrik, organized as part of the 2023 Plein Air Talks series and in conjunction with the advanced studio series “Plein Air” taught by Nahyun Hwang, initiated in the fall of 2020. The series explores the complex material and socio-political performance of air, and the intersectional vulnerabilities and agencies of air as a critical spatial medium.

Join by zoom

In this guest lecture, artist-composer, technologist, educatress and writer Jessika Khazrik will be presenting two of her projects around agnotology, the study of the production of ignorance and uncertainty, in relation to the weaponisation of the ionosphere and the history of nitrogen fixation.

The space anti-opera ‘Songs from a Nano-Spectacular Space’ details circumstances leading to the nuclear and unnatural weaponization of the atmosphere taking place at the height of the cold war and informing present-day policies and agnophilia. Probing the first anthropogenic space weather, geomagnetic, solar and artificial radiation belts hand-in-hand with a pre-internet nuclear global communication system made of a ring of nano-needles, ‘Songs from Nano-Spectacular Space’ challenges the perception of climate change as an accidental aftermath of industrialization through investigating the role of the military and its influence on the organization of knowledge and ignorance in weaponising the climate, solar power and the environment.

“Cartography of Darkness” is a transclusive research platform dedicated to exploring universalisms and the (dark) unity of knowledge in our highly obfuscated, crisis-ridden age. The online cognitive mapping platform is comprised of a sonified accretive map made of several layers of interactive strata and spatialized data, a public media repository that makes accessible for the first time research material found in personal archives created by scientists, artists and investigative journalists and the scraped web, new text and audio research published regularly as part of a seasonal periodical/research chapter that remains open for a period of nine months. While delving live into the web architecture of “Cartography of Darkness”, Khazrik will be focusing her platform presentation on her research series “‘Anosh Adur’: A History of Ammonia”. While proving the political economy and trans-millennial history of ammonia, the ongoing series meticulously examines the diverse applications and trades of ammonia, ranging from the alchemy of Ancient Egypt, China and Zoroastrianism to its modern “fixations” in science, warfare and industrial agriculture.

Jessika Khazrik is an artist-composer, technologist, educatress and writer who works with a trans-millennial production of knowledge based on an environmental understanding of the techno-politics of voice, media, and code. While probing the unity of science and the multi-dimensionality of experience in an age that institutes separation, her indisciplinary practice revolves around the collective search and need for polymathic resonance in the 20th-21st centuries and long-term future. She holds BAs in Linguistics and in Theatre from the Lebanese University(LB) and a MS in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT(US) where she was awarded the Ada Lovelace prize. Khazrik has been a fellow at Home Workspace Programme(2012-13), Digital Earth(2018-19), HfK Bremen(2020), SHAPE Platform(2021-22), Live Art Forms(2022-23) and is at present a fellow at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Health(2022-23). As a technologist, she is the founder of the techno-study group ‘ قراءة الحواسيب READING COMPUTERS’, the peer- to-peer open collective and web platform ‘POST-CORONIALISM’ and the online transclusive research platform ‘ خريطة الظلام Cartography of Darkness’. Her music, voice-based essay performances and multi-modal sound installations have been performed and exhibited internationally. Having grown up around a quarry contaminated with toxic waste, she has been active in struggles for environmental justice since early adolescence.

Free and open to the public.