The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish
Edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos
Hatje Cantz + Serpentine
Edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos
Hatje Cantz + Serpentine
Serpentine announces the launch of The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, a book edited by Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Serpentine Ecologies and curator and lecturer at the Academy of Art and Design of Basel Filipa Ramos. The launch event of the publication, which includes 100 contributors across the arts and sciences, will take place in London at the Royal College of Art on 27th October 2025.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is a publication that brings together interventions across the arts, the humanities and the sciences to investigate the history and cutting-edge of more-than-human theories, from animal, plant and fungal intelligence, consciousness and affect, machine sentience and interspecies communication. This publication is an important landmark in Serpentine’s long-term research project of the same name, begun in 2018 to inaugurate Serpentine’s General Ecology project.
The publication includes original conversations, essays, interviews, meditations, poems and artwork representations by 100 of the most celebrated environmental thinkers and creatives across disciplines – anthropologists, artists, biologists, ecologists, gardeners, musicians, philosophers, theologians and more, including Sophia Al-Maria, Ted Chiang, Emanuele Coccia, Peter Gabriel, Tim Ingold, Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Karrabing Film Collective, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Himali Singh Soin, Merlin Sheldrake, Superflex, Jenna Sutela, Anna L. Tsing, Chris Watson and many more.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is arranged in five chapters. The first, titled Worlds, focuses on principles of symbiosis and coevolution, anthropological approaches to more-than-human beings; and radical reimaginings of the planet. The second, Beings, presents more-than-human beings as collaborators, co-thinkers, and interlocutors – from the sound of a forest stretching and shifting to the swarming messiness of the soil, through to the body language of animals. The third, entitled Grounds, hosts debates concerning more-than-human and planetary life within the social and political entanglements of anthropocentrism, and calls for more-than-human and environmental practices of justice. Odes, the fourth chapter, brings to the fore an understanding of mythology, storytelling, and meaning-making as planetary manifestations, tracing human/more-than-human relations across deep time. In Oracles, the book’s closing chapter, the spiritual realm and advanced technologies (human and non-human) meet at the porous and uncertain edges of planetary computation and complexity.
Publication launches are planned internationally throughout 2025, including at IMMA Dublin on 14th September and then a launch at the Royal College of Art, London, on October 27th 2025, which will feature a Serpentine Cinema programme as well as the presentation of Filipa Ramos’ latest monograph, The Artist as Ecologist (London: Lund Humphreys, October 2025), which discusses the ways in which contemporary artists embrace practices of environmentalism. The London event will include a lecture performance by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. The first launch of the publication took place at E-WERK Luckenwalde, Germany as part of the festival’s sixth iteration, subtitled Love and Lament, and presented by Schering Stiftung, Berlin.
Art Direction by Giles Round. Contributors: Andrew Adamatzky; Yussef Agbo-Ola/Olaniyi Studio; Sophia Al-Maria; Allora & Calzadilla; Saelia Aparicio; Chloe Aridjis; Heather Barnett; Antoine Bertin; Lynne Boddy; Elizabeth-Jane Burnett; Vivian Caccuri; Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela; Federico Campagna; Teresa Castro; Alex Cecchetti; Vint Cerf; Ted Chiang; Sean Cho A.; Nicola Clayton; Emanuele Coccia; Revital Cohen; & Tuur Van Balen; The Coven Intelligence Program; Marisol de la Cadena; Michela de Mattei; Onome Ekeh; Cru Encarnação; James Fairhead; Adham Faramawy; Simone Forti; Claire Filmon; Rosalind Fowler; Peter Gabriel; Elaine Gan; Jay Gao; Sabine Hauert; Daisy Hildyard; Amy Hollywood; Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser); Tim Ingold; Derek Jarman; Alex Jordan; Karrabing Film Collective; Leah Kelly; Asim Khan; Kapwani Kiwanga; Dominique Knowles; Bettina Korek; Simone Kotva; Daisy Lafarge; Hannah Landecker; Yasmeen Lari; Long Litt Woon; Annea Lockwood; Thandi Loewenson; Miranda Lowe; Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe; Marcos Lutyens; Carlos Magdalena; Michael Marder; Alex McBratney; Natasha Myers; Nahum; Rasmus Nielsen/ SUPERFLEX; Hatis Noit; Hans Ulrich Obrist; Angelica Patterson; Lucia Pietroiusti; Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Maria Puig de la Bellacasa; Filipa Ramos; Asad Raza; Diana Reiss; Tabita Rezaire; Ben Rivers; Giles Round; Merlin Sheldrake; Kostas Stasinopoulos; Jenna Sutela; bones tan jones; Phoebe Tickell; Anaïs Tondeur & Germain Meulemans; Laurence Totelin; Anna L. Tsing; Oula A. Valkeapäa & Leena Valkeapäa; Sumayya Vally; Kim Walker; Chris Watson; Elvia Wilk; Rain Wu & Mariana Sanchez Salvador.
Published by Hatje Cantz, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is distributed worldwide as well as on Serpentine’s website.
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish
History of the programme
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish began as a multi-year symposium, podcast and research project investigating consciousness and intelligence across species and beings and was launched in 2018 at the London Zoo. Since 2018, it has welcomed over 10,000 audience members and viewers and been a pioneer in environmental and ecological convenings.
2018 at the London Zoo: PART 1 LANGUAGE: On interspecies communications, with Ted Chiang, Vint Cerf, Peter Gabriel and more.
2018 at Ambika P3: we have never been one: On Gaia theory and micro-organisms, with Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Sophia Al-Maria and more.
2019 at EartH Hackney: with plants: on plant consciousness, plant intelligence and communication with the vegetal world, with Tabita Rezaire, Chris Watson and more.
2020 online: the understory of the understory: on land, earth, soil, fungi, with Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Merlin Sheldrake and more. This event marked the launch of Sheldrake’s landmark publication, Entangled Life.
2022, Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto, Portugal: The Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish: on dreams in the non-human world, with Alex Jordan, Onome Ekeh, Federico Campagna and more.
2025, E-WERK Luckenwalde/Schering Stiftung: The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: Love and Lament: on grief and intimacy in a more-than-human world, with Aslak Aamot Helm, Antoine Bertin, Kapwani Kiwanga, Michael Ohl, Alejandra Pombo Su, Elizabeth Povinelli, Claudia Rankine, Asad Raza, Giles Round, Jenna Sutela, Jovana Maksic, Staci Bu Shea and Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen.
In addition, releases on Serpentine Podcast’s series: “On General Ecology” and collaborations with renowned environmental podcast Future Ecologies brought together some 60,000 listeners to dive deeper into the ideas and experimentations of the series.
About Serpentine Ecologies
Since 2014’s Extinction Marathon with artist Gustav Metzger, Serpentine has been at the forefront of environmental action and thought. Since the establishment of the General Ecology project in 2018, the Ecologies initiatives nurture Serpentine’s ongoing engagement with ecology, climate breakdown, more-than-human consciousness, environmental justice and complexity in a changing world. Stretching across all of Serpentine’s activities, infrastructures and networks, Serpentine Ecologies takes a speculative and active stance towards embedding alternative narratives and deep ecological principles into the everyday. Ecologies’ initiatives manifested with projects such as Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The British East India Company on Trial in April 2025, Back to Earth, (2020- 2022), Infinite Ecologies Marathon in 2023, and Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker in Kensington Gardens among many other projects. As part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth project, Serpentine and Penguin Press published 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, a book inviting artists to re-think the climate emergency.
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