Presenters

Curator’s statement

We are only beginning to understand that humanity’s wellbeing is absolutely dependent on the wellbeing of other life forms and biocenoses. The self-organising communication networks of the biosphere ensure the stability of satisfactory living conditions, on the levels of nutrient cycles, soil, atmospheric and climatic phenomena. Ecosystems are kept verdant by the synergetic and intertwined relationships between microbes, algae, mushrooms, plants, insects and all other life forms.

Most of these relationships we cannot see nor measure. Nevertheless, these underground networks are influencing us directly. All terrestrial wellbeing is dependent on the life processes that occur within the soil. Everything that dies is fermented and turned into the juice of new life, mushroom mycelia grow together with plant roots, forming highly complex nutrient and information exchange channels, and difficult-to-measure organic signalling systems keep the processes in balance.

This year’s Biotoopia tries to peek into the depths of the underground networks, in order to better understand and protect them and to recognise an entangled web of hidden networks in human societies as well.

Peeter Laurits, artist (born in 1962), has studied in Tartu and Leningrad State Universities, Estonian Humanitarian Institute and New York International Centre of Photography. His main means of expression are photography and digital manipulations. In the nineties he was engaged with a media critical approach, but soon turned to deep ecology, moved into woods and combined the neolithic attitudes with post-industrial tools both in his art and lifestyle. Now the focus of his artwork is posthumanist ethics and better understanding of other life forms.

He has enriched the tools for photographic expression and broadened the role of the photograph in the Estonian cultural space. Made one-man shows in London, Berlin, Moscow and Chiang Mai, his work has been bought by museums, public and private collections and his monumental pieces have been assigned to public space. In 2017 he was invited a visiting professor for liberal arts at Tartu University, and since 2021 he has been the curator of Biotoopia Conference.