Agenda

PATCHY ANTHROPOCENE AND SPECULATIVE ARCHAEOLOGY
International workshop

9 October 2026, 10 a.m. – 5.30 p.m.

Organized by Francesco Ragazzi and Audronė Žukauskaitė

Thanks to the collaboration between Vilnius University and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the workshop explores our posthuman condition in the “patchy Anthropocene”, as
defined by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. According to the anthropologist, this condition requires us to resist the unifying and totalising perspective of the globe and land on Earth. That would mean acknowledging our patchy, heterogeneous, discontinuous situation, which is fragile and temporal, in other words, “critical”. 

The workshop will explore Tsing’s notion of “patches” and Bruno Latour’s notion of “critical zones,” alongside Gaia theory, as new modes of existence. These new modes of existence require a new “patchy epistemics”: new ways of assembling knowledge that involve scientific observation, speculative aesthetics, speculative fabulation, and other ways of participating in Anthropocene worlds.

Besides these new theoretical approaches, the workshop will discuss the different ways in which contemporary artistic practices engage with the “patchy Anthropocene”. These
practices imply not only rethinking space across multiple scales and discontinuous “patches”, but also redefining time through speculative archaeology. Speculative archaeology implies the nonlinear conception of time: it looks for alternative scenarios of the past and also suggests orientation towards the future. This reorientation goes beyond the human spacetime coordinates and helps us to imagine the post-Anthropocene future. The seminar will invite the audience to discuss both theoretical and artistic ways to examine multiple scales, discontinuous “patches”, nonhuman geographies, speculative archaeology, speculative aesthetics, and imaginary futurity in the post-Anthropocene world.

The Workshop is part of the Pavilion Days, organised in relation to the works of Eglė Budvytytė, who is representing the Republic of Lithuania at the 61st Biennale Arte in Venice. Drawing upon the research and theories of Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, the artist reexamines archaeological sites which still bear traces of Neolithic matrilineal, animist societies. In her exhibition, animism sing anarchy, the artist questions colonial approaches to the Earth and invents her unique performative practices of decolonisation. Working through the body and within a specific space, the artwork interrupts the linearity of time, redirects the lines of evolution and returns posthuman bodies to the wilderness of the Earth.

For the full programme, please refer to the attachments.

Image credit: Eglė Budvytytė, animism sings anarchy, 2026. Three-channel film installation, 16 mm film transferred to 4K projection, 40 min. ©Eglė Budvytytė, 2026.