Marietta Radomska

Marietta Radomska is a philosopher and transdisciplinary gender studies scholar. In her research, she looks at the ways in which contemporary art practices deal with the questions of death and un/liveability in the context of the environmental crisis and sixth mass extinction. Radomska investigates how contemporary art and cultural expressions explore death, dying, grief and mourning beyond ‘human exceptionalism’ or privilege, so characteristic of Western thought and cultural imaginaries. How can we imagine and understand relations between life and death, living and non-living, and human and nonhuman in a more ‘ecological’ and ecosophical manner, and in the face of planetary environmental disruption? How are these matters positioned in the context of environmental violence, more-than-human vulnerabilities and resilience? How can we approach the issues of difference, interdependence and un/liveability in more attentive and ethical ways? These are some of the questions pertinent to her work.

Since 2016, Radomska has been involved in the development of the new area of research: queer death studies (QDS), a transdisciplinary field that critically investigates and challenges conventional normativities, assumptions and expectations surrounding the issues of death, dying and mourning in the contemporary world. In particular, QDS pays attention to the ways planetary-scale necropolitics render some lives and deaths more recognised, understood or grievable than others. In 2016 Radomska co-founded the international Queer Death Studies Network (QDSN).

Marietta Radomska is also the founding director of The Eco- and Bioart Lab, where she works closely with artists, artistic researchers and doctoral students whose practice and research focus on art and the environment. The Eco- and Bioart Lab opens up a transdisciplinary space, where artistic practice and artistic research converge with philosophy, cultural theory, QDS, environmental humanities and posthumanities in synergy and as equally legitimate voices and practices in order to address critical questions concerned with life/death, nature/culture, art/science, ecology, environment and the body in a more-than-human sense.