Ecological approaches in art and theory are currently redrawing the boundaries between algorithms, bacteria, metal, plants, animals, as well as between you and me. Against the backdrop of ecology as a privileged entry for thinking modes of vitality in the present, this talk will draw on earlier debates on vitalism in times of crisis and ask what artistic and aesthetics practices today may have to offer to an understanding of life in the face of extinction.

Jenny Nachtigall is an art historian and writer based in Berlin. Since April 2019 she is a guest professor for art history and theory at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Previously she was a lecturer in aesthetic theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (2014-19). She completed a PhD on the subject of “Form as Contradiction. Berlin Dada’s Impossible Formalisms“ (publication in preparation) at the History of Art Department of UCL in 2016. Currently she is working on the after-lives of vitalism in modern and contemporary art and theory. Recent publications include a.o. "Vitalism/ ‚Living Form’’” (2018, in Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930, ed. Anselm Franke, Tom Holert), Hybrid Ecologies (forthcoming, ed. with Maria Muhle, Marietta Kesting, Susanne Witzgall) and Klassensprachen – Written Praxis, (2017, ed. with Manuela Ammer, Eva Birkenstock, Kerstin Stakemeier, Stephanie Weber). She writes a.o. for art-agenda and Artforum and Texte zur Kunst.