THE REBIRTH OF A LANDSCAPE
Triennale Milano 2025: Invisibilities
Alejandro Haiek
Research team
Rebecca Rudolph, Tomas Mena, Luis Pimentel, Aram Badr,
Irina Urriola, Sevan Mohamadpour, Atakan Colak.
“Humans are vanishing even as their aggregate biomass continues to swell. Their cities are not their own. They are building habitats for other forms of life. Humans are the tools wielded by those other forms. We are the robots for future insects.”
— Benjamin H. Bratton, The Orchid Mantis of Sanzhi, Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution.
Liminal Phantoms: The Rebirth of a Landscape explores Territorial Epigenetic scenarios in response to escalating industrialization in the Nordic-Arctic bioregion, developing animated avatars that embody biological resilience in hybrid augmented reality. Liminal Phantoms aim to sensorially perform the Ecologies of Aftermath.
The Transborder Pavilion implies an ongoing negotiation of boundaries, evoking biological processes that transcend geopolitics.
Nordic-Arctic Atlas, Alejandro Haiek, Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies, Umeå University.
To understand the destructive dimension of these extractive practices, one must begin by examining microscopic life; to gauge the invisible is the only way to measure destruction.
An astonishing bioengineering process that terraforms the cracks and failures of these man-made geographies takes place at the microscopic scale, in time periods outside of anthropocentric perspectives. Pioneer species play crucial roles in initiating the process of ecological succession in the North Pole. They are the builders who re-establish ecological wounds, enrich the soil, and enable insects to create the conditions for the arrival of successional species. All participate in a chain of processes and cooperations, capable of resuscitating damaged landscapes with new biotopes and natural ecosystemic bodies.
Liminal Phantoms, Triennale Milano 2025. Alejandro Haiek & Rebecca Rudolph, Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies.
In response to the expanding industrialisation in the Nordic Arctic region, the Territorial Epigenesis is developing animated digital Phantoms designed to embody examples of biological resilience after violent human impact. These phantoms aim to sensorially perform and experience disruptions in the landscape alongside microscopic organisms contributing to the repair, restoration, and recovery of toxic and injured bodies of nature, induced by industrial agents such as the forest industry, mining extraction, and mega territorial infrastructures.
Beyond our visual dominance, new landscape forms emerge as potential future reservoirs where natural systems thrive, repairing the wounds, scars, and cracks left by resource extraction. These emergent formations allow us to envision future ecological Edens, proposing new jurisdictional scaffolding and planetary regulations that transcend geopolitical borders and the traditional concept of sovereignty.
Proposal of animated stone.
Liminal Phantoms, Triennale Milano: Invisibilities. Alejandro Haiek, Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies.
While metadata serves to measure these environments, it also subjugates digital replicas, amplifying the reality that remains invisible to humans, exposing the devastating consequences of agents of disturbance at microscopic levels, as well as the altered frequencies, intervals, and natural cycles imperceptible to human senses.
Revisiting Historical Narratives: Tracing Linnaeus
The installation presents a trans-dimensional immersive experience by intersecting information collected during a research field trip to injured post-industrial landscapes along the Luleå River in Sweden, across the fluctuating line of the Arctic Circle, following the path of Carl Linnaeus’ 1732 journey.
Territorial Epigenesis - Territorial Epigenetics
The exhibition narrative is built around the duality of: Epigenesis as Process - how territories evolve through self-organization, socio-environmental interactions, and emergent infrastructures; and Epigenetics as Memory - how past interventions, governance mechanisms, and historical layers imprint on territories, influencing their capacity for adaptation, resistance, or transformation.
Ecological Succession and the Rebirth of a Landscape.
Liminal Phantoms, Triennale Milano 2025. Alejandro Haiek, Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies.
Drawing from Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, The Phantom biotopes emerge as multidimensional entities from the scars of post-industrial sites, showcasing the cooperation of species in regenerating what were once dead zones. This challenges dominant narratives and the power structures of mega-territorial systems, which have reshaped Nordic geographies through a demiurgic process of terraformation.
The Phantoms introduce a nuanced critique of digital territoriality, sometimes reinforcing material history, sometimes dissolving into autonomous digital entities where data representations become performative realities, detached from territorial materiality. These traces do not merely explain environmental damage but render it visible in ways that demand interpretation. In some cases, they may become more "real" than their decayed physical counterparts.
The scene is interrogated by a loss of temporal and spatial referentiality: regenerative, slow-tempo biotopes reengineer landscape scars, amplified and accelerated digitally, enhanced by living algorithms.
Crafted using 3D scans and complex behavioral modeling, these Phantoms materialize in immersive experiences spanning hybrid and augmented realities - performative digital environments at the intersection of digital bio-sculpture and parametric life. The embodied experience challenges the way we perceive matter in the digital age, repurposing tools against technological control.
Liminal Phantoms, Triennale Milano 2025. Alejandro Haiek, Laboratory of Intersectional Ecologies.
Our research on digital phantoms in extractivist landscapes positions them as liminal entities, oscillating between documentation and fabrication, presence and absence, forensic evidence and speculative world-building.
Speculative Fabulation and the Future of Digital Phantoms
This exhibition builds on speculative fabulation, envisioning an intersection of biological, technological, and digital entities, living and thriving within the context of posthuman ecologies. It is framed within Donna Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto (2003) and Cyborg Manifesto (1985). Can these digital phantoms be “rewilded” as hybrid beings, allowing digital representations to evolve alongside natural regeneration?
It is a future we might not witness within the current planetary boundaries - a future where speculative relationships between species, machines, and landscapes emerge, fulfilling the notion that, as Bratton satirically suggested, we might be the robots for future insects.
- Alejandro HaiekResearch leaderalejandro.haiek@umu.se
- Rebecca RudolphResearcherrebecca.rudolph@umu.se
- Tomas MenaResearchertomas.mena@umu.se
- Luis PimentelResearcherluis.pimentel@umu.se
- Aram BadrResearcher
- Sevan MohamadpourResearcher
- Atakan ColakResearcher
- Irina UrriolaResearcher
Phone: +46 73 380 39 26
laboratory of intersectional ecologies
umeå university
www.labprofab.org
