Political Animals

​21 Aug, Fri, 7.30pm–9.30pm
Presentation by Luca E Lum, followed by a discussion with the artist.

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​22 Aug, Sat, 11am–7.30pm
Open Studios and Open Research Session, featuring readings from Scatter, Enclosure (The Herd Comes Down to Dream).

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​Political Animals continues Luca's exploration into the animal and machine as figures that parse anticipation and catastrophe as part of her larger inquiry about nonhumanity, mediation, and time.

​For the presentation at h0thouse in August, she returns more specifically to the figure of the animal as encountered through animal media. This formal experiment combines elements of a lecture, poetry, and scenography, to look at the ways the figure of the animal make its appearances and appeals amid ecological, social, and political uncertainty and crisis. What is the animal as a genre of address?

​Pulling between contexts, histories, and points of view, she interrogates her own encounters with animals and animal media, ranging from archival material, talk show segments, and Tik Tok tutorials, curious about the ways animals form the medium, agent, and scale through which the social and political is metabolized and engineered. The presentation loosely plays with the idea of a media control room, making use of h0thouse's set up as a design studio and experimental play space.