As part of the “Creative Futures” initiative at the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University, The Larva of Time exhibition explores the contextual resonances between artistic practices and scientific processes, reflecting on how (human or non-human) individuals can survive on this planet. As a special event of the exhibition, Moving Earths, a project initiated by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati, is presented as a screening and panel discussion, to give further responses to the exhibition’s overall theme.
Philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour left us in 2022. At the heart of his work was a project of anthropology of the "moderns," with the history of science as the primary tool and ecological crises as his ultimate challenge. Latour helps us to think of the Anthropocene, this new era in which humans have become the main geological force disrupting the living balance on Earth.
For Bruno Latour, the theater and the museum were ideal places for thinking and making others think, true laboratories. In Moving Earths, the second opus of the Terrestrial Trilogy, Bruno Latour takes over a theater stage, working with the researcher and theater director Frédérique Aït-Touati. Their work allows the audience to follow the philosopher's thought process in action, like an artisan at work. On his desk are books, documents, an iPad, photographs, a notebook, machines, optical instruments, and chalk—objects he manipulates and through which he constructs his reflection. The desk becomes a full-fledged scenic and dramaturgical space: thought unfolds as a narrative, an investigation.
Moving Earths draws a parallel between Galileo’s discovery and the more recent "Gaia hypothesis." By discovering that the Earth is not the center of the universe and that it moves, Galileo disrupted the cosmic order as well as the political and social order of his time. Four centuries later, researchers James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis formulated the "Gaia hypothesis," which presents the Earth as a sensitive organism capable of self-regulation. They describe a planet where life, space, and time are the products of the actions of living beings, forcing us once again to change our vision of the world and the cosmos. Latour then asks: Are we experiencing a transformation of the world as profound and radical as that of Galileo's time? One thing is certain: we no longer know exactly on which planet we live, nor how to describe it.
This project is the second in a trilogy of lecture-performances by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati called the Terrestrial Trilogy. For over ten years, they worked together to create projects at the intersection of research and theater, exploring stage writing and questioning scientific and ecological imaginaries. On the occasion of the first tour in China of the Terrestrial Trilogy (beginning in Beijing on August 24 and 25), Frédérique Aït-Touati will be present for a post-screening discussion with Anna Greenspan and Iris Long, moderated by Victor Wright.
Language: lecture-performance is in French with Chinese subtitles. The post-screening conversation will be conducted in English.
Free and open to the public. Registration required.
Moving Earths screening and conversation is co-presented by Body On&On in Beijing, the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University, and the ICA at NYU Shanghai. The screening and conversation of the play Moving Earths in Shanghai, presented as part of the special program for the 60th anniversary of China-France diplomatic relations and the Festival Croisements, was supported by the Embassy of France in China and the School of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University.
In conjunction with The Larva of Time, an exhibition with BAI Shunong, GUO Cheng, ZHANG Wei, and ZHANG Wenxin, curated by Iris Long.
