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                Radar and
<br>Loughborough University's Gender and Identities Research Custer presents
<br>The Labour of Nature, with Sophie Lewis and Amy Cutler
<br>22nd May 2019, 6-7.30pm, 1.17 Martin Hall, Loughborough University
<br>Free, please book
<br>here
<br>
<br>Through film, a reading and conversation this event will explore, unpick and
<br>reconfigure the entanglements between nature, labour and gender. Taking as its
<br>starting point the contention that there is nothing 'natural' about nature, it
<br>will consider how nature and gender are produced by narrative, labour and
<br>struggle. Crucially, it will consider how this might be done differently: how
<br>we can tell stories that are richly ecological but deeply technological; and
<br>how these alternative ecological understandings pose opportunities and
<br>problems for remaking our world. Questioning forms and processes that might
<br>seem entirely 'natural'-the family, pregnancy, the lives of insects, the
<br>working day, gender identities, the forest-it will expand the horizons of both
<br>the natural and the possible.
<br>
<br>The event will open with a screening of Amy Cutler's short film All Her
<br>Beautiful Green Remains In Tears. This consists of re-edited footage from Walt
<br>Disney's Nature's Half Acre (1951), with its sexist parables about
<br>domesticated post-war suburbia: nest building, chick rearing, mother love,
<br>industrious insects, and traditional gender roles. In this case, the new
<br>voiceover - replacing the paternal voice of Winston Hibler - also focuses on
<br>romantic anthropomorphism. The difference is that this voiceover has been
<br>generated by a neural network in collaboration with data artist Anna Ridler,
<br>using an A.I. which has learned its existence entirely from reading the female
<br>protagonist voice in 14 million passages of romance novels. Using image
<br>recognition and closed captioning, it tells an entirely different story of the
<br>"birds and the bees" of nature documentary: one of female desire, trauma,
<br>masochism, and emotional fantasy. The film is soundtracked by the musician
<br>Leafcutter John, who specialises in creating natural landscapes and ecologies
<br>from generated noise, often using DIY gadgets.
<br>
<br>Following this, Sophie Lewis will read a new piece expanding on themes
<br>presented in her book, Full Surrogacy Now (Verso, 2019). She'll consider the
<br>politics of water and the 'bio-bag,' in which scientists are "automatically
<br>gestating" sheep foetuses. Drawing on and critiquing the mind-expanding and
<br>world-building feminisms of thinkers such as Shulamith Firestone, Maggie
<br>Nelson and Marge Piercy, Lewis will consider what such automation poses for
<br>struggles against the tyranny of work, and how water might be a common feature
<br>of seemingly disparate political and ecological struggles. Lewis and Cutler
<br>will then have a conversation interrogating each others' work, which will be
<br>opened up for questions from the audience.
<br>
<br>Amy Cutler is an artist, cultural geographer, curator, writer, and film-maker
<br>who works with ideas of geography and nonhuman others. She has exhibited her
<br>work or run live events with organisations including the BBC, Somerset House,
<br>Sheffield Doc/Fest, Sheffield Institute of Arts, the Wellcome Trust, the
<br>Horniman Museum, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, Late Junction,
<br>Tate Modern, the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, the Horse Hospital, the
<br>Natural History Museum, and Kew Museum of Economic Botany. Her geography
<br>training impacts her work as an artist, performer, and curator, and she works
<br>frequently on the production of immersive and live cinema and exhibition
<br>events provoking and changing the public conversation around ideas of space,
<br>geography, and nature-cultures. She currently lectures in the Visual Cultures
<br>department at Goldsmiths, University of London.
<br>
<br>Sophie Lewis is a writer, translator and feminist geographer living in
<br>Philadelphia. Her book Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family is
<br>published by Verso on the 7th May. It considers the political struggles of
<br>surrogates, arguing that an increase in their rights could result in
<br>challenging assumptions that children necessarily belong to those whose
<br>genetics they share. This, in turn, opens up space for taking collective
<br>responsibility for children and the radical transformation of notions of
<br>kinship. Donna Haraway has labelled it "the seriously radical cry for full
<br>gestational justice that I long for", whilst McKenzie Wark says that it
<br>"brings us a vision of another life". In addition to this, Lewis has
<br>translated works including Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (MIT, 2016) and
<br>A Brief History of Feminism by Antje Schupp (MIT, 2017). She is a member of
<br>the Out of the Woods collective, whose first book is to be published by Common
<br>Notions in 2019, an editor at Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry, and
<br>a queer feminist committed to cyborg ecology and anti-fascism. Further
<br>writings, on subjects ranging from Donna Haraway to dating, have been
<br>published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Viewpoint Magazine, Signs,
<br>Dialogues in Human Geography, Antipode, Feminism & Psychology, Science as
<br>Culture, Frontiers, The New Inquiry, Jacobin, Mute and Salvage Quarterly.
<br>
<br>Accessibility: The room is situated on the first floor of Martin Hall, which
<br>has an accessible lift. Speakers will be given microphones, and a microphone
<br>will be used for audience questions. The film does not have subtitles, but
<br>please email d.m.bell@lboro.ac.uk if you would
<br>like a transcript of the voiceover. There are male, female and accessible
<br>gender neutral toilets in Martin Hall. If you have any other needs or
<br>questions please email d.m.bell@lboro.ac.uk
<br>
<br>
<br>David Bell
<br>Programme Co-Ordinator
<br>LU Arts & Radar
<br>Loughborough University
<br>01509 222881
<br>(Days of work, Mondays-Wednesday)
<br>
<br>arts.lboro.ac.uk
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