Specimen #1 - #6

Susanne Fagerlund

THE SPECIMEN SERIES Susanne Fagerlund explores animals, plants, and digital hybrid species in the project. She draws inspiration from nature's ability to resist, adapt, metamorphose, and form networks to share resources. During the spring of 2023, Fagerlund collaborated with the Hasselblad Foundation and Gothenburg's Natural History Museum on a project that included inventorying their image archive of living, endangered and extinct species. The 'SPECIMEN' series is a part of the project 'THE MAD GARDENER'. The project title is borrowed from Donna Haraway's theories about how all living things are interconnected in an ecosystem. Haraway describes our existence as deeply intertwined with other species. Haraway ends her text with the encouragement,'…chipping and shredding and layering like a mad gardener, make a much hotter compost pile for still possible pasts, presents, and futures.' Like a 'mad gardener', Fagerlund has treated her own and the Gothenburg's Natural History Museum image archive as a 'compost pile of past, present, and future'. Through a kaleidoscope of algorithms and digital tools, she has 'chipped, shredded and layered' the archives. New digital species emerged as the images were sequenced, fused, and mutated. A speculative ecosystem – where past and future coexist as tentacular hybrid species beyond traditional oppositions. *https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/

Project Collaborators:

Susanne Fagerlund explores animals, plants, and digital hybrid species in the project. She draws inspiration from nature's ability to resist, adapt, metamorphose, and form networks to share resources. During the spring of 2023, Fagerlund collaborated with the Hasselblad Foundation and Gothenburg's Natural History Museum on a project that included inventorying their image archive of living, endangered and extinct species. The series' THE MAD GARDENER' and the 'SPECIMEN' series is a development of that work.