Feral Malmö
A multispecies perspective of one of Sweden’s largest cities
Malmö is feral. Like many cities, the coastal city of Malmö is a space of constant transition and growth. Development and infrastructures of people, corporations, and governments remake the living landscape of the city daily. Entangled in this unstable space are a multitude of different species; their worlds forming and collapsing in concert with the frenetic metabolism of the city.
What endures are Malmö’s feral ecosystems, wherein species—seen and unseen—subsist off of human infrastructures.
We are lichens. We are a small collective of designers recognizing and responding to the more-than-human community (human, plant, animal, fungal, microbial, etc.) in Malmö, Sweden. Our programs and deprograms are carried out in collaboration with people and the many species living in the city.
Speculating facts and fables. Interviews, research, collaborative workshops are tools we use to write the story of these feral systems. Using design, storytelling, illustration, and other creative and practical workshops to make that collection of social-ecological knowledge open to anyone living in Malmö.
To become feral. The influence of capital on urban growth excites division and alienation in the more-than-human community. Division between communities of people and species.
In our view, growing and knowing with other species can help us wriggle out of the grip of systems that thrive on inequality and extinction. To find, make and unmake the stories of Feral Malmö, is a way to find the urgent alternatives of precarious urban living in this time of crisis. By keeping our designs open and collaborative, we hope to become more feral. And to give people a more-than-human map for political and social living in Malmö.
Anthrovision!: social-ecological fabulations on extinction in the city
Did you know that we’re in one of the most destructive mass extinction events (“biodiversity crisis” if you want to be fancy) in the history of the planet? Most species—so many of the plants, animals, fungi, and the other ones are, as they say, going the way of the Dodo. We just recently learned about this, and we were shocked, but then after a minute or so of grieving and processing this geological cataclysm, we decided we’re going to do something about it. Luckily, we’re trained in perhaps the most powerful artistic and scientific craft that humans have to offer: branding and marketing.
Our mission isn’t complicated: we’re hitting the brakes on this sixth extinction by giving an appealing voice and widely-relatable brand to every living species that we manage to come across (except humans of course!) Starting with dispatches from this newsletter.
We market-movers have woken up and smelled the dying roses to realize that with every species we lose, we lose yet another financial asset. Think about it, how many trillions of dollars have been made from pigs, honeybees, penicilium molds, tuna, bananas, cashews, coffee, chickens, apples, palm, black beans, yeast, horses, manure, lumber (from all sorts of trees), dogs as pets, horseshoe crabs, mangoes, truffles, almonds, corn, rice, turkey, salmon, lobster—you get the idea. Every day species go extinct, and every day we could be losing another billion-dollar-a-year industry.
Which is why Anthrovision! has arrived to disrupt the conservation industry and use every weapon in our vast tech and design arsenal to exploit every living species for all they’re worth—thereby saving them from extinction. We know that the only guaranteed way to ensure that every microbe on our planet is protected is, quite simply, to find each and every microbe a market.
Unlike those who trade in the meat, forestry, healthcare, and pet markets, however, Anthrovision! is not interested in making markets from lifeless corpses of plants and animals and fungi and bacteria. Instead, we see that the many living species of this planet offer a limitless number of investment opportunities in the culture, creativity, and lifestyle markets. I ask you now, can you honestly say that there aren’t some days that you look in the mirror and wish something other than your beleaguered, mammalian face looking back? Why not a cuddlefish? Or a slimemold?
Anthrovision! is committed to helping people see how every species, even maybe the gross and weird ones, is worth at least a few bucks, and to remind you—the smart, concerned, beautiful, modern investor/consumer—that extinction is just bad business.