UMA Research Seminar

Of nurseries, and other possible forms of phenomenotechnical geoengineering

8 March 2023 3.30pm-5pm CET
Eastward view of tree nursery at mangrove biosphere Cabezas de San Juan undergoing community-based reforestation by local NGO Para La Naturaleza in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Photo Luis Berríos-Negrón 2022


Currently, geoengineering is limited to scaleless, hemispheric, technological mitigation. During his postdoc, Luis Berríos-Negrón will explore performative, sculptural, and spatial forms that critically challenge and shape other possible definitions of this controversial practice.

To give way to that prospectus, Luis reviews recent research and teaching work in Puerto Rico, Switzerland and Sweden, presenting some initial views into related traditional and experimental, individual and collective art and science research methodologies. He contrasts these regions practicing different cultural and scientific techniques for observing and remediating colonial/industrial traumas and cataclysms on Caribbean forests, and on Alpine and Nordic riparian zones. Luis associates these materials to his continuing critical survey of the history of ‘greenhouse’ as practice-based research medium through the subset of ‘tree nurseries’. He intuits that expanded notions of ‘nurseries’ may facilitate or even heighten unforeseen sensory, physical, and mythical relations between human and more-than-human species as a potential, affirmative form of phenomenotechnic (i.e. as simultaneous specimen, space, and display structure for observation). These potential, alternative relations may generate proportional forms of geoengineering that recognize colonial memory and climate injustice, while affirming the elusive imperative of biodiversity.

Luis Berríos-Negrón is UmArts Postdoctoral researcher in Art and Architecture in partnership with Umeå School of Architecture and Bildmuseet.