Fictioning Archives with Nina Kuttler
A four-episode newsletter capsule that forms an archive in itself of Nina’s practice and research — in subscribers’ inbox. Nina’s multi-disciplinary practice revolves around ecological awareness, the anthropocene and a sense of interconnectedness between species, time, self and outer space. In her work cultural knowledge and mythologies are entangled with historic approaches to natural science as well as contemporary methods of research.
Info
This capsule brings us along different types of archives, and the different ways to understand the concept of “archives”: less in the sense of collecting something, and more in the sense of gaining different forms of knowledge about a thing.
Episode 1: ARCHIVES OF THE FUTURE
The capsule opens by introducing the idea that archives can foretell the future – as a speculative past, through science and fiction, under constantly changing environmental factors. Nina gives examples critically exploring: how to accurately represent a species of an area, of a specific time?
Episode 2: ARCHIVE IN A TOOTH
How to archive with material that don’t preserve well? We dive into the shark teeth, one of the most commonly found fossils that could lead to a wider understanding of Earth and time.
Episode 3: ARCHIVES THAT LIVE
This episode shifts the focus to the depths we can learn from living things, and the magical thinking in science evidenced by electric fish and the strange interactions between submarines and shrimps.
Episode 4: ARCHIVES IN OUTER SPACE
The capsule ends a (big) step further: on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. If we can think of the Earth as one big archive, what about other globes in outer space?
About the artist
Nina Kuttler is an artist and writer based in Hamburg. Her previous education includes Art Schools in Hamburg and Hangzhou, Rupert’s Alternative Education programme in Vilnius, and she continues to learn from various practitioners in artistic and scientific fields. In 2018 she was awarded the Artistic Research Fellowship Tandem by the German Federal Environmental Agency. In 2019 she was awarded the Encouraging New Talent Award by HfBK Hamburg, nominated for the Hiscox prize for young artists and was a participant of the BMCT programme in Istanbul. 2020 was mostly dedicated to zero gravity training in various bathtubs for future space travel. After returning from a noninvasive colonisation expedition to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2021 she will be a resident at Cité des Arts in Paris. In 2022 she will return to Istanbul with a studio scholarship awarded by the Hessische Kulturstiftung. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Editorial, Vilnius (Lithuania); Harburger Kunstverein, Hamburg (DE); Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia (CY); ENSBA, Paris (FR); Kaunas Artists House, Kaunas (LT); MOM Art Space, Hamburg (DE); Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (LT); Goldsmiths University, London (UK) Temporary Gallery, Cologne (DE); Kunsthaus, Hamburg (DE); Produzentengalerie, Hamburg (DE); Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin (DE).