1. CHAPTER 1: PARALLEL BIOME HYPOTHESIS - A POSSIBLE FIRST CHAPTER

The so-called "first chapters" are always the first. The first ones to not know; the first ones to eventually wonder about their "first" usefulness and consistency; the first ones to inquire about their previous and probable fate, where they come from, and through which avenues they may possibly reverberate; the first ones to lose sight of the demarcations of their arrival and departure, to have their supposed entirety questioned…

In a linear and causal logic of apprehending time, the “first ones” revel in their "primordial" condition, in their introductory responsibility and pioneering importance, as well as the sequence of events — as attractive as they are repellent — that they channel and cradle to be scattered to the four winds, toward the sought-after infinity, to the rhythm of the vicious spiral of progress. However, even though our existences are asphyxiated by this logic, impelled to resize themselves according to the dictates of such a predictably homogenizing metric — one of clock hands and gears, passing through railways, highways, airports, ultra-fine submarine cable networks, lines of binary code, heat sensors, leading to the incessant scroll of touch screens, "datification" of relationships, political-economic-environmental collapse — there has long been an urgent articulation for our possible histories and other aspirational (counter)narratives to somehow shake ever more impetuously this violent and harsh geometrization of our contingencies, of angles so rigid and little suited to our multiple failures of meaning, contradictions, diverse mutations, and, above all, adverse to that which stubbornly remains incomputable.

The designation "first" always requires a criterion, a convention, a fiction that determines and inscribes this point "1" amidst the whirlwinds of space and time, often situated midway, thus depending on both a before (A) and an after (C​). But what before (A) and what after (C​)? Do before (A) and after (C​) make any difference when one is trapped in a loop of technolinguistic automatisms? Now, right now, if we could dive incessantly, both on a macro and microscopic scale, both in the interstellar direction and intracellular vastness, we certainly would not be able to reach an extreme, an infinitesimal unit of measurement, the summit of our incursions — and, in truth, there is no need to detach ourselves from the ground to get lost in this endless journey. We are always midway to. Midway to what/from what/from whom? On the brink of what?

In this rocambolesque score, as imminent as repetition is transience, an insurgent force, bursting forth against the loop of "bad" and oppressive fictions with which we find ourselves implicated; a defect, an inconformity inscribed in the very mechanics of repetition and habit, an incalculable error, always ready to implode it. As the thinker Mckenzie Wark said — in a lecture held for the Contemporary Art Biennial of Riga (Latvia) — regarding our time, favorable to the efficient and proliferating dissemination of fake news, post-truth, we need to think about more interesting and complex ways of intertwining what we call facts and fictions, and that the problem does not lie in the act of fictionalizing narratives itself — we already live in a fiction — but in how we do it and how we possibly escape the recurrence of fictionalizing "bad fictions." How do we deregulate this machine stuck in a loop of "bad fictions"? There is no ready answer, certainly not a single one, but perhaps we can collectively sense some among many clues.

Just like the "first chapters," perhaps we could experiment, first and foremost, with the benefit of doubt and engage in the creation of practices that allow us to increasingly estrange the units of measurement, the settled — and self-centered — coordinates that have long been imputed to us and inform the manufacture of our realities, our bodies and limits, our imaginative framework, and from which a crude hierarchical distinction between human and non-human, intelligence (human) and the non-rational (incomputable) is also delineated. If the world we deal with and collectively corroborate is a symbolic world, of representations/mental schemas and processes/operations based on these symbolic forms, this is just one of the many forms of intelligence that are woven into the evolutionary course of life, just one among many others — often incalculable to us. Perhaps we could experiment with collectively constructing immeasurable, insubordinate units, giving vent to other forms and sources of capitulation and notation, spiraled, recursive, that not only include but also recognize themselves as part of the incalculable, incomputable forms of life; other forms of capitulation that are not first or last but rather a larger part of a decentralized outburst that occasionally ebbs in still and deep waters. In this sense, it would be more interesting to think of the "1" delimitation/capitulation as a trigger, 1 provocateur, 1 collective disseminator, among many others. 1 seed among many. It is within this scope that the collective S.E.E.D. (Singular and Experimental Entanglement in Derivation) inscribes its efforts of creation, speculation, and collective summoning, much like the intelligent form "seed," among many others, provisionally venturing into precarious, devastated soils but dreaming and agitating with a thirst to weave distant relations with other insurgent forms of creation, to dig out exits to parallel and transversal biomes, biomes less sparse to life. Chapter 1: Parallel Biome Hypothesis is a management of resources, desires, and efforts in this direction.

Chapter 1: Parallel Biome Hypothesis is an expository collective experience curated by the S.E.E.D.group. The proposal intertwines with the collective's beginning and has been taking shape for about a year and a half, sparked by the idea of creating a biotechnological system: the hybridization of 1. being/tree-technology with 2. machine-technology within a single body. An interface of encounter that foreshadows the desires and inquiries nurturing this collective work and exhibition, leading us to question our established notions of technology, how we establish connections with it and the diverse worlds of living beings/systems, as well as prompting us to ponder on how it interlaces organic and inorganic elements in the making of our bodies and other living corporealities.

The experience involves the participation of around 60 artists and creators, with a focus on projects/research primarily experienced in the Global South, exhibited in person in São Paulo, at the Galpão Cru space. Chapter 1: Parallel Biome Hypothesis, this attempt/invitation to a speculative exercise on possibly integrating a parallel biome, beyond the given and validated, unfolds, therefore, from the construction of this technodiverse and chimeric system "Tree+Machine”, anchored at the core of our questions and the exhibition space, extending its roots and sap through 5 environments that configure the exhibition's path, which the participating artists/creators compose with their works and individual concerns, offering us some clues on how to sustain such a speculative game.

Chapter 1: Parallel Biome Hypothesis does not conceive technology as "the Other," but as an intimate part of what we are. Forms of life and systems are technologies in themselves, whether machines, forests, artificial intelligence, biological brains, human language, or virus DNA/RNA. All these domains/worlds/living systems are interconnected in an ongoing conversation, whether we perceive it or not. The way this conversation is shaped reinforces the world we live in, politically, economically, socially, and affectively. How are we conversing with these worlds? How are we creating worlds with them? Which parallel biomes are we actively corroborating?

S.E.E.D Collective:

ARTISTS

HIVEMIND_DAO:

S.E.E.D.:

PRESENTED BY:

PARTNER AND SUPPORT:

PRODUCTION:

CREATION AND GENERAL ARTISTIC DIRECTION:

CURATORSHIP:

EXPOGRAPHY:

COMMUNICATION TEAM / SOCIAL NETWORK:

DEV:

DIGITAL ARCHIVING AND CATALOGING TEAM:

ACCOUNTING:

_VISUAL IDENTITY_

GRAPHIC DESIGN:

MOTION DESIGN:

VIDEO EDITOR:

_EXHIBITION GUIDE_

SCRIPT:

PRESENTATION TEXTS:

TEXTOS DE APRESENTAÇÃO:

COPYDESK:

LAYOUT:

_IMAGE AND AUDIOVISUAL DOCUMENTATION_

PHOHOTOGRAPHER:

VIDEO PRODUCTION TEAM:

IMAGE EDITING AND RETOUCHING:

SCRIPT:

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4. AKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The S.E.E.D. collective would like to warmly thank everyone involved in making this project a reality: all the members who tirelessly worked from the initial conception to the materialization of the event; all the artists who accepted the invitation and submitted/created artworks, building this experience collectively with us; the support and funding from Refraction DAO; and everyone who attended and contributed to the realization of "Chapter 1: Parallel Biome Hypothesis".

We extend our gratitude to everyone.

S.E.E.D.