Back to Earth: 140 Ideas - Tomás Saraceno

Back to Earth presents a new mini-podcast series inspired by the publication of 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, a collaboration between Serpentine and Penguin. Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Kostas Stasinopoulos, this book is part of Back to Earth, Serpentine’s long-term project dedicated to the environment and the climate emergency.

For this podcast series we’ve invited five artists from the book to share their contributions and take us on a journey through actions and thoughts their instructions might inspire. In this episode, Tomás Saraceno invites us to listen to the spider playing its web at night inside our homes. We are encouraged to move away from a fear of spiders (arachnophobia) and towards a love of spiders (arachnophilia), both here and in Webs of Life, presented by Serpentine and AcuteArt. With vibrations from the Arachnophilia community: Nephila senegalensis, Pardosa lugubris, Cyrtophora citricola, Habronattus dossenus from the Arachnophilia Archives recorded at Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Back to Earth is curated and produced by Rebecca Lewin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lucia Pietroiusti, Jo Paton, Holly Shuttleworth and Kostas Stasinopoulos.

Special thanks to Bettina Korek, CEO of Serpentine, Bloomberg Philanthropies and all the advisors Claude Adjil, Brian Eno, Alice Rawsthorn, Kevin Conroy Scott and Yesomi Umolu for their insightful advice on this book.

This series of five artist episodes is produced by Deborah Shorinde for Reduced Listening, with music from Femi Oriogun-Williams.