MTU Events

Our 2025 Symposium ART/INTERSPECIES highlights issues between our human species and the plants and animals who share our planet.
MAKE 2025 will feature speakers who will discuss and explore this interface between human/animal/plant through their research publications, and in artworks made with or in collaboration with animals and plants, and artists whose work exemplifies a great empathy with living beings beyond our human society.


OUR LINEUP:

• Timothy Morton:

UK/USA: Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Björk, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton has written Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology (Columbia 2024), All Art Is Ecological (Penguin, 2021), Spacecraft (Bloomsbury, 2021), Being Ecological (Penguin, 2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, 2016), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (Chicago, 2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010), Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), 8 other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. Morton’s work has been translated into 10 languages. (ZOOM appearance).

• Marcus Coates:

UK; Marcus Coates lives and works in London. From his attempts to become animal, to his vicarious experiences on behalf of people, his work offers an inquiry into the degrees to which we can understand, know and relate to others. Often performative – using a process of radical empathy as a motivation to create, examine and critique relational tools – he tests actual and perceived boundaries between individuals, within communities, and with other species. New ways of relating are proposed and often put into practice. His approach is often functional with a social and ecological impact in mind.

• Dorothy Cross:

IRELAND. Her work ranges from object to opera: working with sculpture, photography and video, and looks at time and transformation and what may be considered sacred or maligned ; shark-skins gilded with pure gold, Jellyfish drawing themselves on linen, operas in handball alleys and slate quarries, feet carved from different marble from around the world and kisses cast in silver taken from the inside of two mouths . The work moves from gallery and museum to external projects that may take years to make and may only exist for a short time. Her most recent work Kinship/Home involves the return of a mummified body of an Egyptian man to Cairo . Recent solo exhibitions include: Veins of Other, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2024. Damascus Rose Frith Street , 2022. ‘Glance’ , New Art Centre. 2017 ‘Connemara’ Turner Contemporary, Margate 2013. She has represented Ireland in several Biennials including Venice 1993 and Istanbul 1997.

• Siobhan McGibbon:

IRELAND Dr Siobhan McGibbon is a Visual Artist & World-builder with a transdisciplinary practice. Her expression mutates, merging sculpture, animation, drawing, permaculture & participatory installations. McGibbon created the world of Xenophon (2015) with writer Maeve O’Lynn to query post-Anthropocene futures. The world unfolds with each body of work, collaborating with practitioners in specific fields to build the narrative. Her most recent project explores Japanese knotweed; it positions the unkempt: weeds, hedgerows, and meadows, as queer sites of desire.

• Saša Spačal:

SLOVENIA Saša Spačal is a postmedia artist working at the intersection of living systems research, contemporary and sound art. Her work focuses primarily on the posthuman continuum, where human beings exist and act as one of many elements in the ecosystem and not as sovereigns.. Her work was exhibited and performed at venues and festivals such as Ars Electronica Festival (AT), Prix Cube Exhibition (FR), Transmediale Festival (DE), Onassis Cultural Center Athens (GR), Chronos Art Center (CHN), Eyebeam (USA), Cynetart Festival (DE), National Art Museum of China (CHN), Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (SI), Kapelica Gallery (SI), Device_art (CRO), Art Laboratory Berlin (DE), Kiblix Festival (SI), Gallery of Contemporary Art Celje (SI), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (SRB), Lisboa Soa Festival (PT). She was awarded Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention and nominated for Prix Cube.