The Vampire Squid from Hell, online group show curated by Lee Pivnik and Wisrah Villefort for the Institute of Queer Ecology

'The Vampire Squid from Hell' featuring Ana Matheus Abbade, Anastasia Sosunova, Club Ate (Bhenji Ra and Justin Shoulder), Emma Pryde, Felipe Meres, Janaina Wagner, Jesse Kanda, Margaret Barry, Maya Bjornson, Micah Schippa, Nona Inescu, Nuno Q Ramalho, Raquel Nava and Tobías Castro

With the largest eyes and darkest soul of the animal kingdom, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis floats deep in the mesopelagic zone, within pressure so immense our bodies would crumble. The Vampire Squid From Hell (a direct translation of its Latin name) is neither a vampire, a squid nor an octopus, but rather a phylogenetic relict, the last surviving member of its order. Surely, it’s exceptionally nonhuman, a point that Vilém Flusser makes and that we depart from as we consider what it means to hold a human identity that's constructed in opposition to things we view as different. A terrible amount of vile political work can be done by dehumanizing people, to reduce people to animals, to monsters, to subhuman status. And a great deal of environmental activism is being done today by extending human rights to nonhuman entities, from Great Apes to Rivers. We look towards nonhumans as we interrogate the feeble categories of “human” and “nature” in the hopes of bringing forth a posthuman, postnature future.

Group show curated by Lee Pivnik and Wisrah Villefort for the Institute of Queer Ecology as part of The Wrong Biennale, hosted by earh sciences

https://earthscienc.es/the-vampire-squid-from-hell/