Join us Thursday, December 14, 6-8PM, at Printed Matter (Chelsea) for a conversation with Rich Pell about postnatural histories and futures, moderated by Lauren Lee.

The manipulation of life is one of the oldest and most popularly neglected forms of cultural production. Yet it is evident in prehistoric cave dwellings, organic vegetable gardens, concentrated animal feeding operations, and myriad other sites and scenes. PostNatural History is the study of the origins, habitats, and evolution of organisms that have been intentionally altered by humans through captivity, breeding, or engineering. These lifeforms relay stories that challenge and transform our understanding of human culture. Featuring hundreds of entries for collection specimens organized under the postnatural categorical matrix of Isolating, Breeding, Engineering, and Leaking, this book-as-exhibition produced and published by the award-winning small press K. Verlag in Berlin makes the exceptional collection of the Center for PostNatural History available to a global audience for the first time.

Founded in 2008, the Center for PostNatural History is an independent museum with a private collection in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since 2 March 2012, CPNH has been visited by thousands of people from all over the world. CPNH is the only museum of its kind in the world—collecting artifacts of the intentional and heritable changes humans make to the living world as natural history museums, nearly without exception, have chosen to ignore this category of life.

k-verlag.org/books/this-is-not-an-artifact
postnatural.org

Note that this event will be filmed for use in a future documentary on the work of Richard Pell