(LAB)YRINTH

2019

(LAB)yrinth was a collaborative research-creation project developed as part of the Useful Fictions Symposium hosted by the Chaire Arts & Sciences at École Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France) in partnership with the University of California, Davis. The project was the outcome of Lab 5: Making, Reflexivity and Engagement, led by Manuelle Freire and Aniara Rodado, with Research Associate Pedro Soler. WhiteFeather participated as a Graduate Fellow supported by UC Davis and the Chaire Arts & Sciences.

Working collectively, the group investigated the campus grounds of École Polytechnique as a contested site of knowledge production. Combining scientific observation with embodied and speculative methodologies, participants mapped the landscape through sensory exploration, ritual practice, material collection, digital sampling, recognition walks, and experimental acts of making. Rather than treating the site as a neutral environment, the project sought to recover overlooked narratives, relationships, and forms of situated knowledge embedded within the terrain.

Through activities that included potion making, field recording, cartographic intervention, and environmental sampling, the group identified and characterized eight distinct zones across the campus. In contrast to the institutional naming systems that defined the landscape through acronyms, donors, and administrative functions, the project generated alternative identities rooted in botanical, geological, sensory, and mythological characteristics. The resulting work proposed new modes of engagement with scientific environments by focusing on imagination, embodiment, and collective meaning-making as legitimate tools of inquiry.

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(LAB)YRINTH was curated by David Familian for the Speed of Light Expedition at Galerie HUS, Montmartre, Paris, and was subsequently presented as part of At The Margins: Experimental Engagements in Science, Literature, and the Arts, curated by Jesse Colin Jackson and Antoinette LaFarge at Viewpoint Gallery, UV Irvine, in conjunction with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) conference.

Participants: Manuelle Freire, Aniara Rodado, Pedro Soler, WhiteFeather Hunter, Stefan Laxness, Matt Ledwidge, Teresa Carlesimo, Ragnhild Ståhl-Nielsen, and Alexander Rubeola.