By Elida Silvey

The digital and the ecological meet in harmonious balance to highlight the interconnectedness of species and make a bid against the current climate crisis in Sabīne Šnē's beautifully curated exhibition To Be We Need To Know the River. Hosted by the East London gallery Lot Projects from 23–29 August, we saw a dung beetle roll a ball of digital dung in a 3D animation as the sounds of AI-produced music wafted from television screens. Cardboard cutout hyphae, the communicative tendrils of mycelium, illustrated interconnectivity as 3D-printed mushrooms sprouted from the floor and walls of the space, inviting viewers to interact with the work by directing their view to the minutiae of microorganisms. These organisms, alongside blue lichen, are the stars of Sabīne Šnē’s show.

Interested by the intersection of digitalized artworlds and these life-affirming organisms — depicted through matte riverscapes, rocky naturescapes and 3D animation of water-rich utopias — I sat down with artist Sabīne Šnē and curator Nastia Svarevska to further explore the meaning entrenched within To Be We Need to Know the River and the accompanying publication Beyond Human Horizons.

Elida Silvey: Did you find that when imagining these virtual naturescapes that you were terraforming a potential future?

Sabīne Šnē: Yes and no. For me, that was the goal, and I was trying to imagine what kind of future I would like to live [in]. At the same time, keeping in mind that, that [kind of future] could not be the case. It's very possible that humans will just disappear from the earth one day. So it was this imaginative, utopian thinking in a very dystopian setting.

Do these pieces find themselves in conversation with the current climate crises? If so, what are you hoping they say?

Sabīne Šnē: I really hope they do. I hope they highlight that there are so many other beings that are part of us and part of this world and that their relationships and their lifestyles are actually the reason why we can be here. I really wanted to spotlight them and give them the center stage and just celebrate them for everything that they do for us.

I think in the wider picture, they help us to live. Already there are many scientific papers and research that [are] really focusing on non-humans and what we can learn from them and what we can adapt in design – especially in fashion design and in all the technologies. It's just celebrating them, learning from them and eventually being better versions of ourselves because of them.

In regards to 445 Million Years Ago to Today, I found it incredibly interesting that the digital landscapes being depicted were split up into 12 pieces and mounted on honeycomb panels. Honeycomb in particular struck me as poignant given its mathematical structure that so clearly mirrors nature. What made you want to split this collection up into 12 and how important were the materials you chose?

Sabīne Šnē: Materials were very important in the whole show. All of that is recyclable; from paper that [Nastia] used for the publication to all the objects and everything. So that was one of the main things that both of us wanted to achieve.

The work itself started when I read about five great mass extinctions and the sixth one that we are [living through] right now, at this moment. I decided that I [wanted to] somehow split the whole story [into] parts and then it just felt natural to innovate, [by] divid[ing] the water part and what's happening above it. It is one story, but the story consists of many different chapters.

Following up on this piece, in your work, you depict the course of climate change throughout history through the depiction of water pipelines. What made you choose the pipeline?

Sabīne Šnē: Water is and always has been the reason why all of us are here. We can't survive without water. So I was trying to find a way to show it very visually in your face, trying to make the point through that and pipelines just felt like the easiest way to do it.

Something I found particularly striking in your work is this blatant intersection between nature and the digital man-made world. In Beyond Human Horizons, there's a piece titled “Samples Collected from Experiences” where you write about how, when your family first gained access to a computer, you made the connection between the way the World Wide Web functions with fungi. It made me want to dive deeper into why you choose 3D animation and 3D printing as your mediums, can you tell me a bit more about your process?

Sabīne Šnē: It's all based on world-building. I like that I have this chance to build my universes and to build them in a way that I see them or [the way] I wanna see them. I think 3D animation is the easiest way for me to achieve that. I think I'm a bit of [a] control freak, so the opportunity to create my own thing from zero until I'm done with it, I think that's the most interesting part for me.

One of my favorite pieces was Network of Mutuality, in particular the moment where a dung beetle is rolling a ball of digital dung with a striking rocky micro-landscape in the background. Why did you choose the depiction of a beetle and what were your considerations in regards to the organisms you highlighted?

Sabīne Šnē: When we started to talk about the whole exhibition it was clear that we need[ed] non-humans in it. So I went through a lot of research and picked these four different entities, mostly because all of them are doing [an] amazing job for us and the planet and different ecosystems. But also all of them are gonna be able to survive in [a] post-apocalyptic world because, in one way or another, they can survive nuclear war or flooding or fire. They will be able to recover themselves and maintain their life on earth. So I think that is the most important part.

That's interesting. When you were thinking about creating these depictions, did you think about it in a way that was post-human or in symbiosis with humans?

Sabīne Šnē: At the very beginning it was post-human. Then I was like, oh, that's too dark – let's bring humans back somehow. Then I wanted to incorporate elements of humans, [but] it just felt so forced and unnecessary. I got rid of that, and so it's basically these non-human entities in a world where humans are still hopefully there, but they are only as guests or visitors. They are viewers. They're not actively participating in shaping the environment.

One of the queries that your work is attempting to answer that I found interesting from the accompanying curation sheet, was “What can we learn from our non-human neighbors” – so I’d like to know what you think we can learn from them and how can this be applied to our current society?

Sabīne Šnē: We can learn symbiosis in terms of lifestyle and life choices because for them it's all about symbiosis. They're interacting with each other. Lichens are [in] symbiotic association between two or three organisms and I think these non-human entities are very well aware that they are part of something bigger and that they need each other to be. That's what we could learn, not only regarding non-humans but also human and human relationships. That we need each other and we need to be responsible for the environment that we are in.

As part of Collapse, Shelter and Ecotopia, you discuss Mycelium in text by stating “It's all about connection, weaving threads and sustaining life”, do you think we can find a similar symbiosis with other species? If so, what would we need to leave behind or change in our society to make that a possibility?

Sabīne Šnē: We have to change everything right? From the economic and political systems to our mindsets. I think it is possible though.

Nastia Svarevska: I think we're still talking about Western society, and how we’re used to liv[ing] in Western society. If you think about indigenous people, it’s us in the Western societies now thinking about that [way of living] and going back to that. Whereas there have always been people who've lived in this symbiotic relationship with nature. I think now we're talking about finding new ways to reintegrate it into our lifestyle, but I feel like it's always been there.

Do you think it's a colonialist mindset that has changed this?

Nastia Svarevska: Yeah, the extraction [mentality] and using nature for our benefit, but if we do that to nature, then that's what it will be doing to us. It’s quite sad.

I definitely agree. I loved the AI-generated audio you had and noticed that sound seemed to take space in relation to your work, with the accompanying audio description, Beastiary’s set during the private viewing and Hayley Harrison’s Circle of Listening workshop. I’m curious to know how important sound was to your process and if these were compiled to evoke something in particular.

Sabīne Šnē: AI started just as a fun experiment and then I realized that I could actually use it. So what I did [was] I took stills from the videos and fed it to AI so the sound is generated from the stills of the videos. Then I cut out all the parts where AI desperately tried to incorporate human-made sounds.

Just [to] make it more ambient, because there were parts which sounded like cars in the distance or like humans singing or what sounded like someone washing dishes. I just cut them out and put together the rest of the audio to create this soundscape that is complementary to the videos.

In regards to Beyond Human Horizons, there is an element of interactivity with the publication – whether it's by drawing yourself as a butterfly in the beginning or writing down your mantra at the end– this gave me a sense of a call to action, asking us to restructure our thinking, which mirrored the exhibition. Do you believe To Be We Need to Know the River has an element of social philosophy to it?

Sabīne Šnē: Yeah, because [it's] bringing many different voices together and they're responding to each other and overlapping. I think it was very interesting for me.

Nastia Svarevska: When I was thinking about having the publication and the workshops it just came together like a puzzle. This is essentially what the exhibition is also trying to do — talk about symbiosis. These workshops, the performance, the publication exist in symbiosis with one another. I think it was very important to have that participatory and interactive element [in] the exhibition because that's what the exhibition is about. How we can learn from non-humans and also from each other.

As I made my way to and from Šnē’s studio through a park pathway I began to take note of the life bustling beneath London’s skyscrapers, the microcosms of a society outside of our own. By decentering the human experience in her depictions of earth’s ecosystems, Šnē creates the possibility for understanding a future beyond human horizons. One where we live as visitors on this planet, in harmony with other living things and symbiosis with one another. ♦

Sabīne Šnē: Terraforming a Potential Future Through Symbiosis

By Elida Silvey