Mineral Ghosts and Rare Earth Bacteria

The Centre for Emotional Materiality

Mineral Ghosts and Rare Earth Bacteria

Saturday, November 10, 2018

7:00–9:00 PM

Public talk and performance with Tiare Ribeaux

The existence and miniaturization of our computing devices are enabled by minerals and rare earth elements, yet the abstraction of these minerals in the sleek designs of our consumer electronics has put us out of touch with their geological origins: the vibrant living matter from which they came. To bring into focus the origins of our intimate digital devices, Tiare Ribeaux will present a brief artist talk and a performance of mineral separation using Roseobacter bacteria, followed by an interactive activity to help ease our separation anxiety from our smartphones and put us back in touch with the minerals encased within them, reconnecting us to our earth bodies.

Tiare Ribeaux is a Hawaiian-American new media artist whose work explores the entanglements of human technologies and infrastructures with mythologies, the environment, and non-human species. She is interested in living systems, deep/dark/media ecology, rhizomatic networks, speculative futures, multi-species and collaborative entanglements. She’s also grown algae to make biofuel in Kona, Hawaii, and studied harmful algal blooms off the coast of Puget Sound. She recently completed an international artist fellowship as part of the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator in Kyiv, Ukraine, and has shown work both nationally and internationally, including ISEA Hong Kong, Transmediale, IZOLYATSIA and Tokyo Fashion Week. She is currently the Artistic Director of B4BEL4B Gallery, produced the Soundwave 7 Biennial in San Francisco in 2016, and has worked with the de Young Museum, California Academy of Sciences, Fort Mason Center for the Arts, and the Oakland Museum of California, among others.