Disnovation.org’s Futuristic Bestiary: Imagining a New Era of Bio- and Geodiversity

The Bestiary of the Anthropocene (2021), compiled by Nicolas Nova and the artist collective Disnovation.org, transforms the literary genre of the bestiary into science fiction. Alongside essays by scholars such as Matthieu Duperrex and Anna Tsing, the volume contains entries on various unusual objects, presented in image and text, e.g., “Square Watermelon”, “Artificial Reefs”, “Radioactive Mushrooms”, and “Bacterial Superbugs”. In a speculative extension of Carl Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, the volume presents the kingdoms of minerals, animals, plants—and the “Kingdom of Miscellaneous”, all equally filled with imaginative, sometimes fantastic subcategories and entries. In the age of extinction, this bestiary tells the story of our departure into a new era of bio- and geodiversity.

The talk analyzes how Disnovation.org’s Bestiary of the Anthropocene narrates present and future forms of diversity. Particular focus lies on the playful character of literary classification and imagined futures, for instance, placing “Homo Sapiens” in the taxon “Modified Animals”, or envisioning planetary pollution with species like “Plastic Flowers” and “Artificial Snow”. The talk further discusses the question of desirable futures. The volume advocates adaptive change and a new understanding of kinship; nevertheless many of the new beings appear threatening, especially entities such as “Prions” or “Nuclear Craters” or military animals such as “BigDog”. The pathways into the future shown here alter familiar scenarios through aestheticization and reinterpretation. For instance, plastic floods trigger an evolution in which living beings and garbage form symbioses, giving rise to a new taxon, “Microplastic-saturated Animals”. A planet of trash hybrids seems hardly desirable—yet these anxiety-ridden futures are presented in their own beauty.

Dr. Jasmin Köhler: Postdoctoral Researcher in the Cluster of Excellence “Imaginamics. Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining”, Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Studied Sociology, Gender Studies, and Literary Studies; B.A. and M.A. with distinction; PhD in Modern German Literature at Humboldt University of Berlin (summa cum laude, 2024); 2019/20 Visiting Scholar at the Department of German, University of California, Berkeley; 2023/24 Research Associate at the Institute for German Literature, HU Berlin; 2024 Gastdozentur in “Modern German Literature” at the Institute for German Literature, HU Berlin. Current Research Project (Habil. NdL): Taxonomic Literature, 18th Century–Present.