Archaeologies and Affect (original) (raw)
Related papers
Material Agency and Physical Boundaries
Herneoja, Aulikki; Toni Österlund and Piia Markkanen (eds.), Complexity & Simplicity - Proceedings of the 34th eCAADe Conference - Volume 1, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, 22-26 August 2016, pp. 521-528, 2016
The research builds on the relationship between matter and energy and the idea of boundaries as sentient interfaces capable of affecting our bodily experience and perception of space due to their inherent physical attributes. Two key issues addressed are firstly, the revisiting of the architectural boundary as a thermodynamic zone and secondly, the identification of material behaviour in relation to energy stimuli. It is argued that the transient behaviour of materials can offer an instrumental reconsideration on how architecture establishes spatial articulation through boundaries and this is demonstrated through a design-led project.
From Mud to Chaos: Precariousness and Self-Organization in Ceramics Practice
This study explores how instability, impermanence, and self-organization converge in ceramic art, challenging the traditional association of ceramics with durability and functionality. Drawing on personal insights, site-specific installations, and cross-disciplinary theories, this study examines how incorporating deteriorated spaces and transient materials into ceramic practice can symbolically explore human conditions, cycles of creation and destruction, and environmental resilience. Inspired by the self-organizing principles and stigmergy found in nature, ceramics are reimagined as an interactive and evolving process in which materiality actively participates in creation. This research resonates with contemporary art movements that critique the “white cube” paradigm, emphasizing the fragility and natural rhythms of chaos and renewal. By integrating philosophical ideas, such as Walter Benjamin’s concept of ruins as allegory and Erich Neumann’s archetype of the vessel, this study underscores the capacity of ceramics to convey the themes of melancholy, transformation, and interconnectedness. It contributes to modern discussions on sustainability, the agency of materials, and the role of art in representing the delicate and interwoven nature of existence.
In: S.L. López Varela, ed. The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119188230.saseas0363, 2018
Material agency denotes the possibility that things can act. The defining criterion for such agency has varied between theoretical strands, but generally entails the notion that material objects have an effect on the course of action that is irreducible to direct human intervention. The concept of material agency is part of the "material turn" that puts objects in the picture of the humanities and social sciences as more than simply passive instruments or empty shells for social symbols and meanings. It contributes to a broader challenging of the boundaries between ontological categories such as nature and culture , active and passive, or persons and things, and opens new opportunities for collaboration between scientific and interpretive archaeologies. Relational agency The notion of agency is an enduring legacy of post-processual archaeology. Moving away from New Archaeology's template of people as survival-or profit-seekers, and infused with practice theory, post-processualism's agency denoted people's differential capacity to act, steered by their structural position, but allowing for the spark of contingency and improvisation. Gender , power, class, and so on were therefore no longer qualities that one possessed (as per New Archaeology), but emerged out of the constant, dialectical recomposition of social structure in daily practice and were inherently relational. Post-processualism revolutionized archaeol-ogy's take on human agency, but did not extend this to the object world. An interest in things as symbols (see material symbols) was soon transformed into a broadly textual reading of material culture, emphasizing how things could be ascribed different meanings depending on The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences. Edited by Sandra L. López Varela.
Materials are social constructs, but they also have agency
Matériaux et techniques, 2023
A puzzling matter about materials, particularly structural materials, is that they exhibit both a rather extraordinary extension in time, bridging over many historical and prehistorical ages, and a dynamic dimension, changing as they are in time to the point that materials may not be easily recognized as similar today as thousands of years ago. To understand this dichotomy, it is necessary to reach beyond materials science and STEM disciplines and to collect concepts and methods from SSH. Materials and energy are at the core of the physical world in which society functions: they provide the structure of the artifacts that we need, along with the ability to make and use them. They do not exist in an absolute, Aristotelian world, but are invented along historical time, by people to meet their needs, hic et nunc. Materials are social constructs, as is the "theory" (technology, science in modern language) that gives us the keys for making them. As society changes historically, people's needs evolve and "new" materials are created on the shoulders of older ones, in a kind of evolutionary process. This is the view of social constructivism. This evolutionary metaphor is a first explanation of the continuity between, say, iron from a Roman bloomery and steel, as a contemporary commercial product. This has been formulated as the Social Cycle of Materials (SCM) by sociologists of Knowledge and Innovation, as a process of continuous innovation in which materials are socially constructed over and over again, a process often called "progress". The continuity from old to new materials needs to be explained by some other model, however, to be fully understood: indeed, why is iron enduring so much, when it might have been displaced by another material at each evolutionary step and it didn't. The explanation we propose is to accept that "materials have agency", i.e. that they themselves are the actors of their own perenniality. This refers to another model, the Actor Network Theory (ANT) of Latour et al., which analyzes how change is pulled by a combined network of actors, that include people, organizations, non-human living entities and inanimate things as well.
Making as a Way of Interacting with the Environment
chapter in Earth, Wind, Fire, Water , edited by Randi Grov Berger and Tonje Kjellevold, published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers (2020). ISBN 978-3-89790-603-7 , 2020
As craft practitioners, we interact closely and intimately with materials and tools. As we learn to listen to the voice of a material, to the possibilities and limitations it presents, we adjust our intentions to what is feasible in this human-material interaction. In this way, we learn to work with the material rather than forcing our will upon it. Through the years, a solid and deep experiential knowledge grows forth that becomes embodied in our souls, becomes part of who we are. When working with a natural material, such as clay, the source of the material may be present in the work presented, but also as an idea about connecting with the environment on a larger scale through the interactions with the material. Through craft practice, we have a direct channel for interacting with our environment, as what we make changes the material world concretely, even if in small ways.
Matter presences: the sensitive consequences of the mechanisation of the raw material
Heir from a culture marked by modern dualism, man seems to find himself, abstract from his environment. As a consequence, a large number of human creations today is considered by some authors as uprooted. Built with earth, vegetal fibers, stone, etc., vernacular architectures appear as an extension of nature, its colors, its materials, its forms and its textures. Most of the contemporary architecture examples, on the contrary, seems to have lost this link with the territory, the natural cycles and the human know how. Could the use of raw materials and the promotion of touch (and a more direct relationship to the world) be allies to create architectural spaces that reaffirm a better link with the body and reboot a genius of the site? This article questions the transformation of raw materials into building materials. Referring to the work of art in its mechanized reproduction, Walter Benjamin refers to the loss of aura. This concept is reinforced by the notion of the sacred developed by the anthropologist Michael Taussig who, when speaking of synthetic color, refers to the loss of the body of color. The passage by these two thinkers raises some questions to reflect on our sensible relations to the non-human in order to stop this relation of exploitation towards matter. To conclude, the paper presents a tactile experience entitled "Material Presences", developed within the framework of a creation research. This experience proposes to reflect on the presence of materials and the notion of aura: What does wood matter transmit to us according to its type of transformation? Does this transformation process change our sensory relationship to this material? Can we say that some have lost their aura?
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2017
I describe how close attention to the process of sculpting clay from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory can create a detailed description of a mutable sense of agency and of self. First, I show that sculpting is associated with a loss of sense of agency and self. Second, that to sense agency as a systemic phenomenon (rather than a personal attribute) creates anxiety. Third, that meaning in an art encounter develops in association with an anterospective viewpoint. Fourth, that within the logic of the extended mind, emergent meaning becomes openly available for further exploration (meta-cognition). Fifth, that artistic creativity is not an opaque process. It proceeds in a similar manner to other forms of human, sense-making activities. Finally, that playing seriously with clay can be used in an investigative manner-as a tool for material conceptualisation.
2019
This exegesis proposes art as an in/hospitable space for female embodiment, drawing on manifestations of the uncanny, the shadow, and the ghostly, for which theoretical support is found in new feminist, posthumanist, and new materialist discourses. Research for this exegesis has aimed to archive and reimagine two decades of ceramic figurative sculpture practice as well as establish a new language for my practice through an expanded field of material enquiry. Attention to the sensorial field of clay is an intuitive, as well as logical step in praxis. It recasts the perception of what the 'traditional medium' of ceramics may have to offer, in an era in which the system of art is becoming increasingly virtual. These investigations merge an intuitive understanding of clay with medical scanning technologies, video making, studio logic, and spatial investigations. The additional use of performance, collaboration, and interdisciplinary processes has destabilised and blurred the dis...
Dialogue In the Making: Emotional Engagement with Materials
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2020
Taking a psychological and philosophical outlook, we approach making as an embodied and embedded skill via the skilled artisan’s experience of having a corporeal, nonlinguistic dialogue with the material while working with it. We investigate the dynamic relation between maker and material through the lens of pottery as illustrated by wheel throwing, claiming that the experience of dialogue signals an emotional involvement with clay. The examination of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of habit, the skilled intentionality framework, and material engagement theory show that while these theories explain complementary aspects of skilful engagement with the material world, they do not consider the dialogic dimension. By way of explanation, we submit that the artisan’s emotional engagement with the material world is based in openness and recognition and involves dialogue with the material. Drawing on the intimate relationship between movement and emotion, it promotes an open-ended manner of working and permits experiencing with the material, acting into its inherent possibilities. In conclusion, we suggest that dialogue, whether verbal or nonverbal, constitutes a primary means for making sense of the world at large, animate and inanimate.