Umwelten: The Animal People
Traumnovelle
In a bid to maintain human inhabitation of the Earth, humans have begun to draw from the genetic pool of the animal kingdom in order to adapt their bodies to the changing planetary conditions. Bodies are hybridized, reinforced, augmented, and otherwise fitted to survive the extreme weather conditions and hostile lands of the Capitalocene, an age of suffering and deprivation brought on by the exploitation of resources in an endless pursuit of capital. These human-animal hybrids, although they collectively form the human species, nevertheless develop differentiated modes of interaction with their environment. As a consequence of their hybridization, each hybrid has developed their own Umwelt.
Umwelten are the different ways living beings perceive the world through their biological and cultural constitutions. Different species sharing the same environment have different Umwelten. While winged creatures read the air currents through the ruffle of their feathers, the blood-sucking tick perceives the bodily odor and warmth of approaching mammals. Through sensory perception, an Umwelt binds all the semiotic elements of an organism’s environment into a whole. Umwelten challenge the anthropocentric value system that holds that humankind rules over all living and non-living beings. They allow us to approach other species objectively through the exploration of their subjectivity. Recognizing our own Umwelt allows us to consider humans as belonging to their environment rather than as external beings acting upon it.
Built on the remnants of a dead world, the city of Umwelten is a system of extraction overlaid with the multiplicity of new human-hybrid habitats and social rituals. The supposed primitiveness and grotesque of organic hybrids contrasts with the absurdity of so-called rational and scientific belief systems that precipitate their own collapse. Overlapping networks of sensory reactions determine the form of this emergent environment, no one Umwelt exerting more influence than the next. The Animal People invent the animism of the Capitalocene, which does not oppose living and dying, body and machine, artificial and natural, truth and spirit.
Fly into the haze
The shifting wind hums and bangs
With the city’s work
Rusty iron legs
Brushed by swirling sea spray
My antenna dance
Fearless fleshy claws
Heave the sea-bed Laden ores
Till they can no more
The enhanced human
Once again harvests the riches
Of a dead planet
Bio
Traumnovelle is a militant faction founded by three Belgian architects: Léone Drapeaud, Manuel León Fanjul and Johnny Leya. Traumnovelle uses architecture and fiction as analytical, critical and subversive tools to emphasize contemporary issues and dissect their resolutions. Traumnovelle alternates between cynicism and enthusiasm all the while advocating for critical thinking in architecture. Traumnovelle distances itself from current forms of naive architecture and refuses to glorify the mundane.
