Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy | Nella Aarne: Notes on our Collective Cosmoecological Body

Curator Nella Aarne presents an online lecture exploring what it means to live as part of one collective body.

Notes on our Collective Cosmoecological Body asks what it means to practice care and to affirm life as part of one collective body – the common matter that binds the world together – when every way of life poses far-reaching and unforeseeable effects on the lives of others. Meandering through a selection of scholarly works and artistic practices, the notes touch on more-than-human sociality, the devastation caused by Western colonial capitalism and our obligation to remain attentive to the vital needs of others, even with the risk of not fully comprehending what those needs are.  
  
Notes on our Collective Cosmoecological Body is a love letter to all who ever, in any way, contributed to or enabled the hours of discussions and collective learning in the context of the Of Animacy Reading Group from 2017 till 2020.

Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy is a dynamic programme of new commissions, films, workshops, and conversations considering both our individual health and collective wellbeing by exploring societal and ecological issues that affect both people and planet.   

Watch now

About Nella Aarne

Nella Aarne is a curator living and working in South West England. She is the Co-Director of Obsidian Coast with artist Sam Smith, and the convener of the Of Animacy Reading Group. Envisaging feminist and environmentally sustainable practices, her work considers ethical encounters, collaborative learning and redefined notions of productivity. She is invested in critical thought that calls for heightened sensitivity to our own socio-political and material entanglements with boundless subject positions, histories, living beings, molecular compositions, technological apparatuses and infrastructure.

Nella is also an Associate Lecturer on the MA Curating programme at the University of West England and has worked on projects for ICA, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Glasgow International; Art Licks Weekend, London; and Science Museum, London. She earned her BA Honours in History of Art from the University of Leeds in 2012, completed the MFA Curating programme at Goldsmiths in 2015, and was the recipient of the Curatorial Junior Fellowship at Goldsmiths in 2015–16.