The Venozoic Era is an artistic and scientific collaboration between Ven Loetz and Sue Lawton. The name “Venozoic” comes from the current geological era of the moon world Damos Nuhl, Ven Loetz’s home. In the Hwalkan language, the root ‘ven’ means ‘double’ or ‘merged’.

Ven, along with many other Nuhls, became stranded on the Earth-side of the northern hemisphere spatial rift through a catastrophic event sometime in the mid 2000’s. Having a background in Earthan studies, Ven is taking advantage of their time here to explore Earth history and human cultures. Sue is working with Ven to develop collections of meaningful objects as well as artistic responses to them.

Damos Nuhl and Earth have a long and complicated history of coevolution and cultural influence. Though largely hidden, these subtle, infrequent interactions have produced a set of parallel worlds with slightly different paths. The Nuhls themselves are much older than the human species since the synapsids of their Permian equivalent had a much more successful proliferation than Earth’s did. The oceans did not suffer to the same degree the Permian oceans of Earth did, so many more species squeaked through Damos Nuhl’s third extinction event. Unlike Triassic Earth, the continents of Damos Nuhl were broken up at the time and multiple groups became successful along divergent evolutionary pathways.

While the various Nuhl cultures have historically developed many religions and philosophical schools, the current dominant paradigm views the soul and divinity as emergent processes rather than entities. Change and adaptation are revered while past forms and manifestations are honored. Fossils and rock formations are viewed as holy relics or texts to be interpreted as planetary ancestral stories. While some still believe in a mythical creature referred to as “The Chaperone”, “Shepherd”, or simply “The Guide”, most view this being as a metaphorical representation of the transit between worlds through spatial rifts.

Nuhl’s possess two sensory organs that have no human equivalent. These are the “hind-eye” located between the shoulder blades and the “heart-eye” located in the center of the chest. The hind-eye, or eldar-okh, allows Nuhls a non-linear perception of time which greatly impacts their worldview. Some irritants in Earth’s atmosphere (largely man-made pollutants), cloud the eldar-okh and leave many Nuhls battling a persistent amnesia of sorts. The heart-eye, or hwala-okh, acts more as a pheromone-sensitive emotional receptor, which can also get misdirected by some human pheromones and occasionally by airborne volatile compounds released by Earthan plants. The peoples of their world also developed along diverse paths that resulted in variations of limb number based on environmental conditions. Neurologically, all Nuhl’s are able to support as many as six arms. The top arms always end in a five-fingered hand, akin to humans. The lower two sets, however are proportionally shorter and terminate in a three-fingered hand or a simple two-digit claw. The number of limbs that develop in an individual is influenced both by genetics and epigenetic factors.

By comparison, Earth’s people and other fauna seem far more set in their ways. And strangely, they have never made use of their own moon. (Damos Nuhl is one of many moons in its system and the Nuhls have colonized two others.) Even as the Earthans change their own ecosystems in dramatic ways, large swaths of the population refuse to believe they are having any impact or that living things can evolve at all. This belief in a static reality despite all evidence to the contrary is both fascinating and frustrating to Ven. If only Earthans possessed an eldar-okh; perhaps deep time would speak to them more clearly.

This project seeks to integrate the Nuhl perspective with the Earthan one. How can we teach our minds to accept large systems of immense complexity? How can we learn to honor our geological and biological heritage at its deepest level? Welcome to the Venozoic Era.