Fusing Iron

Abstract

Nuclear fusion in binary star systems relate to the ways that stars burn fuel to maintain their state, when and if fuel runs out, the star collapses under its own gravity. Inside of binary star systems like the star, Regulus, known within Western constellations as being the brightest star in ‘Leo’, in Sardinian constellation systems as ‘the Sickle’ and within Romanian constellations as ‘the Horse’ - the element keeping the star burning so bright is iron. Iron, is primary within all sorts of metal things, including Euro coins. Our financial realities while not “written in the stars”, tie our humanly experience of exchange, renumeration and financial reparation to celestial experience. In this lecture I will engage constellation drawing and re-naming as a shapeshifting conceptual support that shifts meanings based on where you are, what you see and what cosmologies are in your cultural context. Throughout the lecture I will consider what kinds of connections, materials and renumeration practices we might need understanding reparations as a way of accounting for harms. Following the hir-his-herstoricizing work that I have been doing around the KrüppelGruppe in Germany who have created collective vernacular (community specific) technologies. I will focus on examples where harm has been accounted for/recognized and renumeration has been proposed; I will suggest that sometimes the gravity of harm has been too great - like in stars, the risk is also collapse. Tying a material connection between iron in celestial bodies and iron as it is culturally produced into money - disability community, financial reparations and stargazing will be brought together like stars in a constellation.

Description

Ren Loren Britton is a trans*disciplinary artist-designer reverberating with trans*feminism, technosciences, radical pedagogy and disability justice. The hir-story of cyberfeminism informs their focus on trans*, as in, transgender and trans*, as in, crossing contexts with feminist concerns. They are interested in how socio-technical systems make lives accessible and pleasurable. Departing from the understanding that we live in a deeply ableist white supremacist world they follow justice oriented practices by rethinking and reenacting all terms of who and what fits (in on/offline spaces) with what friction (or not) and why. Disability justice emerges in their practice as a practice of upholding and valuing all non-normative bodies and minds. Ren holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art and a Bachelor of Arts and of Fine Arts from Purchase College. Ren has held residencies at Sonic Acts, Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen, MedienWerk NRW, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Sandberg Instituut, Rupert, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2021. They have exhibited with multiple institutions including Sonic Acts, MU Hybrid Art House, MACBA, Transmediale, HKW, Martin Gropius Bau, Schloss Solitude, Constant, ALT_CPH Biennale, Yale School of Art & Kunsthalle Osnabrück.

Lecturer