Institutional Presentation Statement 

June 10, Remote Institutional Presentation. Session: Art and environment

Keywords: Pedagogy, design, forest, cybernetics, ontology

The biopolitical regime and its systems of oppression have expanded in recent decades to include digital psychopolitics, with the implication that educational systems now not only discipline bodies but also self-consciously engineer compliance and control in minds. Forest Cybernetics is a research and design studio responding to this contemporary crisis, taking the form of a pedagogy lab growing from Kaziranga Wildlife Reserve and Forest in Assam, India. In this institutional presentation, we adopt a lecture-performance format, combining a 10-minute video with a reading from our Library. We discuss the first iteration of this pedagogy lab, held in 2021 in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic, and also share our learnings and proposal for the second session (currently in planning). http://www.forestcybernetics.com

• Mriganka Madhukaillya (PhD) is a design researcher, filmmaker, artist, and assistant professor of design at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India. Together with Cristina Bogdan, he co-founded the research and design studio Forest Cybernetics.
• Cristina Bogdan is a writer, editor and researcher. She founded ODD in Bucharest, Rumania, as a meeting ground for different practices of knowledge sharing. At present she is developing, together with Mriganka Madhukaillya, the research and design studio Forest Cybernetics, in Assam, India.
• Leon Tan (PhD) is an educator, creative practitioner and psychotherapist, whose research focuses on cultural expression and the public realm. An Associate Professor of Creative Industries at Te Whare Wananga o Wairaka (Aotearoa New Zealand), Leon recently edited (with Cameron Cartiere) The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm (2020).