Show Notes
A conversation about Plastic with designer Shahar Livne and environmental humanities scholar Heather Davis.
Shahar Livne is an award winning conceptual material designer. Livne's lifelong fascinations in nature, biology, science, and philosophy developed into an intuitive material experimentation way of work during her degree studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Shahar brings life to unique stories through objects and installations centered around materials as carriers of narratives. Some of Livne's projects deal with obscure materials such as blood, man-made fossils, crystallization and more, today we are going to be focussing on plastic, and Shahar has put me in touch with Heather Davis who I am thrilled to have here as our second guest today
Heather Davis is Assistant Professor and Director of Culture and Media at The New School in New York City. As an interdisciplinary scholar working in environmental humanities, media studies, and visual culture, she is interested in how the saturation of fossil fuels has shaped contemporary culture. Davis is the author of over 80 articles, book chapters, reviews, and catalogue essays. Her most recent book, Plastic Matter (Duke University Press, 2022) traces plastic’s relations to geology, media, biology, and race to show how matter itself has come to be understood as pliable, disposable, and consumable.
LINKS Shahar Livne: https://www.instagram.com/_shaharlivnedesignstudio_/ https://www.shaharlivnedesign.com/ Shahar Livne, Metamorphism: https://www.shaharlivnedesign.com/metamorphism Heather Davis: https://heathermdavis.com/ Heather Davis, Plastic Matter: https://www.dukeupress.edu/plastic-matter
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, French philosopher and historian - Heather spoke about her writing on the endless possibilities of matter and material. Plastic as a material is deeply connected to wanting to manipulate matter at the most fundamental levels Zakiyyah Iman Jackson: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/zakiyyah.jackson#:~:text=Her%20research%20investigates%20the%20fundamental,and%20rhetoric%20of%20Western%20science Thinking about the emergence of the category of the human, and the way it emerges through the hierarchy of humanity. The forced plasticity of the human body in various forms of black suppression. Various humans as abject other that carries the weight of plasticity. Pollution Is Colonialism - book by Max Liboiron Heterotopia: https://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en/ Geo Design, https://www.designacademy.nl/page/5809/geo%E2%80%94design Pinar Yoldas, Ecosystem of Excess. Crimes of the Future The podcast Heather referenced at the end about adaptive capabilities: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/garbage-patch-kids/id1554578197?i=1000641946004
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