Tentacular Thinking-With-Things in Storied Places. Parliament of Things (2019) by Building Conversation

Building Conversation is a collective of artists that creates dialogical art. In September 2019, I invited the Flemish philosopher and theatre maker Peter Aers, also a member of Building Conversation, at the Summer School on Climate at Ghent University. This essay looks into the alternative modes of knowledge production at work during the workshop. First, the tentacular thinking expands scientific language, providing an ally for what Kimmerer called “a grammar of animacy”. Second, the art-science-activist worlding challenges the scientific model of the laboratory. The conversational performance Parliament of Things, inspired by Latour, allows things to emerge as mediators, hence activating a tentacular thinking-with-things. Third, I observe the pedagogical activation at work in the art-science-activist worldings facilitated by Building Conversation in a university context.