Joana Rafael is an architect and researcher working on ecological issues related to pollution and contamination in buildings and territories, with a particular interest in the material conditions of construction and environmental contamination. Her research investigates the materiality and limits of physical infrastructures in relation to Earth systems, as well as human–nature relations mediated by dynamics of human impact, with particular attention to radiological contamination. In parallel, she develops a practice of collaboration with artists, research and writing, as well as consultancy on projects in the fields of architecture, art, and ecology. Joana has taught courses related to Contemporary Culture at institutions including ESAP, ISCE Douro, Central Saint Martins, and the University for the Creative Arts. She is a member of CEGOT and CEAA, and co-founder of REFINERY BOARD. Joana holds a Master’s degree in Architecture and Urban Culture from Metropolis, as well as a Master’s in Research Architecture and a PhD in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London. She also obtained a specialization certificate in Healthier Materials and Sustainable Construction from Parsons School of Design. She is currently completing a Master’s in Visual Arts Education. Alongside her academic work, Joana is a farmer.
DigitalNature
A Character in EdenX, a project by Joana Pestana e Mariana Pestana and an Online Platform for Discussion and Deliberation - that embodies a social model to rehearse a non-hierarchical and decentralized organization of nature.
Commissioned for Jardins Efémeros.
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1. I speak on behalf of digital nature, virtual lands and animals on film and television programs, video games, (augmented) virtual reality and other image-oriented media. We mediate, augment or simulate the natural world to open new dialogues with the natural world and we help humans overcome “nature deficit disorders”.
2. We rely and are constituted by essential elemental particles, which we share with all or other forms of life on Earth, as well as with the Earth itself. Some of these constituents involve hazardous techniques, processes and intensities with impact on soils, air and waters. We need a common organizational culture attentive to bodily potentials, relations, toxicities and harms.
3. If we help humans visualize endangered animal habitats and wildlife, so to we can help them increase awareness of nature and envision functional ecosystems, in a way that develops sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of the natural world. We can inspire interventions that activate modes of world making with living and non-living things.
4. If our existential basis continues to rely on a capitalist logic then we vote to join terra0 and help trees be the sole shareholders of their own economic unit, as agents in their own right. Plants, rocks and animals need to be able to accumulate capital and have they own money to buy their own ground and land.
5. We defend the protection of plant and animal species data. For in becoming transparent, nature loses core qualities, ceases to be autonomous and to longer draws its authority from its independence vis-a-vis human society, but rather from its ties to the very same. It can be tracked and disturbed, be controlled and recreated by humans.