Consciousness
A manifesto for upshift
Philosopher Ervin László outlines how we can upshift consciousness to reach a higher phase in our evolution.
8 December 2023
Serpentine has announced the launch of The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, a book edited by Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Serpentine Ecologies and curator and lecturer at the Academy of Art and Design of Basel Filipa Ramos.
The launch event of the publication, which includes 100 contributors across the arts and sciences, will take place in London at the Royal College of Art on 27 October 2025.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is a publication that brings together interventions across the arts, the humanities and the sciences to investigate the history and cutting-edge of more-than-human theories – from animal, plant and fungal intelligence, consciousness and affect, machine sentience and interspecies communication.
This publication is an important landmark in Serpentine’s long-term research project of the same name, begun in 2018 to inaugurate Serpentine’s General Ecology project.
The publication includes original conversations, essays, interviews, meditations, poems and artwork representations by 100 of the most celebrated environmental thinkers and creatives across disciplines – anthropologists, artists, biologists, ecologists, gardeners, musicians, philosophers, theologians and more, including Sophia Al-Maria, Ted Chiang, Emanuele Coccia, Peter Gabriel, Tim Ingold, Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Karrabing Film Collective, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Himali Singh Soin, Merlin Sheldrake, Superflex, Jenna Sutela, Anna L. Tsing, Chris Watson and many more.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is arranged in five chapters.
The first, titled ‘Worlds’, focuses on principles of symbiosis and coevolution, anthropological approaches to more-than-human beings and radical reimaginings of the planet.
The second, ‘Beings’, presents more-than-human beings as collaborators, co-thinkers and interlocutors – from the sound of a forest stretching and shifting to the swarming messiness of the soil through to the body language of animals.
The third, ‘Grounds’, hosts debates concerning more-than-human and planetary life within the social and political entanglements of anthropocentrism, and calls for more-than-human and environmental practices of justice.
‘Odes’, the fourth chapter, brings to the fore an understanding of mythology, storytelling and meaning-making as planetary manifestations, tracing human/more-than-human relations across deep time.
In ‘Oracles’, the book’s closing chapter, the spiritual realm and advanced technologies (human and non-human) meet at the porous and uncertain edges of planetary computation and complexity.
Publication launches are planned internationally throughout 2025, including at IMMA Dublin on 14 September and then a launch at the Royal College of Art, London on 27 October 2025, which will feature a Serpentine Cinema programme as well as the presentation of Filipa Ramos’ latest monograph, The Artist as Ecologist (London: Lund Humphreys, October 2025), which discusses the ways in which contemporary artists embrace practices of environmentalism.
The London event will include a lecture performance by Elizabeth A. Povinelli.
The first launch of the publication took place at E-WERK Luckenwalde, Germany as part of the festival’s sixth iteration, subtitled ‘Love and Lament’, and presented by Schering Stiftung, Berlin.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish began as a multi-year symposium, podcast and research project investigating consciousness and intelligence across species and beings and was launched in 2018 at the London Zoo.
Since 2018, it has welcomed over 10,000 audience members and viewers and been a pioneer in environmental and ecological gatherings.
Releases on Serpentine Podcast’s series, On General Ecology, and collaborations with renowned environmental podcast Future Ecologies brought together some 60,000 listeners to dive deeper into the ideas and experimentations of the series.
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