Making New Land: An Intertidal Aesthetics (original) (raw)
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Redrawing ecology: dark ecological thought in art-design practice
Stellenbosch University, 2018
The thesis follows my practice based research process as a visual communication designer concerned with visualising deep ecological thought. Throughout this thesis I apply Timothy Morton’s dark ecology theory that argues that an awareness of negativity and tragic melancholy is necessary in order to understand our current ecological climate.This mood is integral to closing the gap between internal human involvement and the supposed external environment. The first section Animism - from deep roots to dark loops is devoted to a theoretical unpacking of animism as a dark contested theory in relation to the darkness of our present ecology in crisis. In the second section, Aesthetic animism, I discuss my own creative practice as an expression of ecological thought supported by an animist mode of perceiving. Animism is unpacked as an outsider philosophy joins forces with working with waste matter in my art-design practice, more specifically the excrement of the ocean. This text incorporates a synergy between knowledge and visuality, text and designed objects as a means of practicing ecological literacy. In order to aid the ecology in crisis this text argues for a renewed, modest, prophetic kinship with our environment, that extends a hand towards non-human agents including the earth within a practice based research process in the realm of visual arts.
"Undoing the Human: *Wild* Art and a Poetics of Ecology"
Hyphen Journal 3.1: Ecologies, 2022
The contemporary turn towards 'wildness' and 'rewilding' seeks an intimacy and bewilderment of subjecthood. While wildness as a western concept has very problematic histories, in its reclaimed usage, Halberstam and Nyong'o argue that it can also enact an 'anarrangement' of normalised boundaries and categories. Gordon Pask's 1957 chemical computing experiment that spontaneously grew an ear in response to environmental stimulus poses similar questions about the relational volition of matter, confronting not only the artist or scientist's control of their research, but the fundamentally colonial notion of a world composed of discrete parts. This article engages with a critical reading of Halberstam and Nyong'o's writing to propose parallels between their conception of the wild and the science of self-organisation, both of which engage in aspects of decolonial critique through a troubling of the colonial mindset that separates in order to maintain mastery. Pask's experiment suggests the possibility of alternative discourses and practices that emphasise an ethics of relation through techniques of wilding.
REDESIGNING NATURE: SITUATING ART AND ECOLOGY
In: Scott, J. (ed). Transdiscourse 2: Turbulence and Reconstruction, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 121-138., 2016
In this chapter an artist and a natural scientist explore the turbulences that disrupt our traditional ideas about nature, the relationship between nature and humans, and how nature might be imagined and shaped in the future. Our goal is not a nostalgic attempt to restore the past nor to naively endorse a replacement of nature by technology or through some other means, but to nurture a discourse that might affect our view of the "natural." We offer a dual approach: first, a discussion of new concepts of nature and the shaping of it, based on recent thinking in ecology, conservation and in art and design. Second, we touch on historical metaphors or notions that attempt to describe current attitudes towards nature like ecologist Nigel Dudley who asserts that we need to understand how ecological function, resilience and persistence occur in natural and cultural ecosystems by a re-focus on the "authenticity in nature" (Dudley 2011). Our own approach is to build knowledge from trans-disciplinary sources, a methodology that considers humans as part of nature not as a disturbance from the outside. We ask, what are the ongoing turbulences in nature and some of the different disciplinary perspectives on nature itself? What specific metaphors or ideas can attempt to define new ways of engaging with nature? The chapter ends with a discussion of "The Grand Redesign of Nature."
ECOLOGICAL-ARTISTIC INTERPENETRATIONS ON A DAMAGED PLANET: INVOKING JAMES JOYCE'S FINNEGANS WAKE
Philosophy as Experimentation, Dissidence and Heterogeneity, 2021
Due to the increasing acceptance that we are now living in an age of radical environmental catastrophe, various innovative ecological-philosophical-artistic texts are being published, dispersed and discussed in attempting to transform our consciousness into ecological selves immersed in the ecological thought. In this essay, I present James Joyce's final exasperating work Finnegans Wake as a supreme text of experimentation and dissidence and how it both links and articulates in dazzling new ways the contemporary ecological thought. Joyce's art offers us ways and visions to constantly realign and transform our relationship to each other and all animate and inanimate things, and incorporates and interpenetrates all human and natural history and experience in this "timecoloured place" propelling us into the reality of the present which is the ecological thought. It is without a doubt one of the most difficult and impenetrable 'novels' ever written, but I propose that is only now that we are ready to enter this 'book of the dark' and understand it within a present-orientated Chthulucene (Donna Haraway's neologism) rather than an Anthropocene epoch. I argue that Joyce's 'explosition' demands the reader's participation as an endlessly experimental, dissident, problematic, destabilising and subversively joyous work of art, and as a philosophical vision for multispecies storytelling and entangling encounters. The final part of this essay demonstrates briefly that there is a profound ecological thought at the heart of the book via at least two aspects: i) ‘Wrunes’—in the ruins, recycling and renewal of human history and the natural world; and ii) ‘Explosition’—in the experience of interpenetration and entanglement of language and of animate and inanimate things and beings.
Science Fiction Studies, 2017
The colonization and habitation of planets calls for the physical modification of space (terraforming) or of bodies (pantropy). While terraforming is often the preferred method for adapting to the conditions of new worlds, pantropy supplements this planetary modification. Discussions of terraforming are linked to issues of climate change, while those of pantropy raise issues related to genetic modification. The oceanic world that Joan Slonczewski depicts in A Door Into Ocean (1986) constrains the way adaptation to and modification of the environment can be conceived. Adapted animal and human bodies evoke the monstrous, grotesque, and sublime; grotesque bodies interrogate the meaning of the animal, the human, and nature. Considering this intersection allows us to explore the interventions into nature that terraforming and pantropy entail, and how pantropy critiques colonialist approaches to terraforming. After a brief discussion of terraforming and pantropy, I will explore how Slonczewski uses pantropy to critique the values and assumptions that underlie the former. Through connections between individual bodies and the ecological body of the world, A Door Into Ocean uses pantropy to refigure terraforming into symbiogenetic communities who adapt and maintain their global environment. The grotesque is fundamental to the text's challenge to colonialist domination embodied in industrial approaches to terraforming. The pantropic subjects and the ecology of the planet Shora are essential to offering an alternative conception of habitation centered on responsiveness to other lives. Jack Williamson coined "terraforming" in his 1942 short story "Collision Orbit." 1 In the same year, James Blish coined "pantrope" to refer to the microscopic humans adapted to inhabit a puddle of water in "Sunken Universe" (1942), later expanded into "Surface Tension" (1952) and incorporated into the fixup novel The Seedling Stars (1957). The emergence of the terms "terraforming" and "pantropy" in the same year suggests an increasing sophistication to the way dialogues about space colonization were constructed in the 1940s. While not exclusive of one another, terraforming and pantropy involves two different modes of habitation, with underlying philosophies that are often opposed insofar as they imply distinct responses to the otherness of nature and other civilizations. "Pantropy," loosely translated, means "changing everything" (Blish, Seedling 8). In The Seedling Stars, the narrator points to pantropy's mythic resonances, arguing that "it went back, in essence, as far as Proteusand as deep into the human mind as the werewolf, the vampire, the fairy changeling, the transmigrated soul" (44). This article's title, "Then Came Pantropy," is drawn from "Seeding Program" in The Seedling Stars, first published as "A Time To Survive" (1956). Colonialism underlies humanity's approach to space colonization in many terraforming narratives. The opposition between terraforming and pantropy turns on a philosophical choice between adapting the other or adapting the self. Terraforming and pantropy are co-dependent technologies that help to accelerate the habitation of other planets. Since The Seedling Stars, pantropy has been expanded to include body modifications other than genetic adaptations, including cyborgization. In A Door into Ocean, the colonizing Valans attempt to establish sovereignty over the indigenous Sharers, in part justifying this endeavor by appealing to the benefits of free trade, and later by pointing to the profits that mineral extraction, Valan fisheries, and seasilk production generate. The adaptation of the environment for the purpose of resource extraction threatens the ecological networks on the planet. The danger that terraforming poses to indigenous communities lies in its disrespect and destruction of modes of habitation based upon a coadaptation of "amborg" communities and their environments. Joan Gordon coined "amborg" to "represent the human/animal interface" understood as "organisms in their most liminal states, not just humans when we acknowledge our family tree, but any animals that interact with, exchange glances with, and acknowledge the presence and sentience of another species" (Gordon 191). The critique of terraforming via pantropy illuminates the choice between the destruction or persistence of existing ecological and cultural networks. Multispecies Flourishing. A Door Into Ocean narrates the struggle between the inhabitants of the ocean planet Shora and occupiers from Valedon, part of the interplanetary Torran empire. Drawing from her Quaker background, Slonczewski presents the indigenous, all-female Sharers as pacifists who practice a consensus-based form of government that stands in stark contrast to the colonizers, who privilege violence and an adherence to hierarchy as strength. In an attempt to preserve their communities, the Sharers Merwin and Usha bring the Valan adolescent Spinel-a "malefreak"-to live with them and the Valan noble, Lady Berenice. Berenice is engaged to Realgar, an officer who later becomes head of the Valan colonizing force. By dwelling with the Sharers, Spinel helps them to better understand their occupiers: the relationships he forms provide new contexts for the Sharers to think about what it means to be human, and this in turn assists Merwen in swaying other Sharers from violent reprisals against the Valans. As the narrative unfolds, the Sharers' non-violent protest and stewardship of their multispecies communities leads them successfully to oppose colonization and terraforming by the Valans. Exploitation of all the planet's inhabitants push the indigenous people to resist occupation. In "Animal Studies in the Era of Biopower," Sherryl Vint explores how A Door Into Ocean offers an alternative to a form of
Writing Beyond Nature: Interview with Julian Hoffman
Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 6.1 (2015), 2015
This interview discusses new nature writing in Europe with Greece-based writer Julian Hoffman. The dialogue explores the notion of new nature writing in Europe through Hoffman’s practice, from the legacies and influences of the tradition and the contemporary development of the form to the ecological, political and social considerations of the places and people that inform and inspire his work. Focusing in particular upon Hoffman’s 2013 publication The Small Heart of Things: Being at Home in a Beckoning World (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press), the discussion explores the ways in which the work approaches and accounts for the complex environmental and political geography of the region of the Prespa Lakes, described as a “transboundary park” bordering Greece, Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Exploring the interconnected attention that Hoffman directs towards the nature, history and politics of the area, the discussion explores the possibilities of social and cultural engagement in nature writing. Further, it examines the ways that Hoffman’s approach is informed by the particular complexities of the cultural and ecological landscapes of Prespa, addressing conceptions of nature and of place in borderlands and at the margins between regions. Additionally, the exchange explores Hoffman’s use of digital media to mix the tradition of nature writing with photography.
Coming to Terms: The Poetics of More-than-human Worlds
Texts, Animals, Environments: Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics, 2019
The chapter serves as an introduction to "Texts, Animals, Environments. Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics". It examines the concepts of "zoopoetics and "ecopoetics" and delineates the objectives of the volume. The authors of the book probe the multiple links between ecocriticism and animal studies, assessing the relations between animals, environments and poetics. While ecocriticism usually relies on a relational approach to explore phenomena related to the environment or ecology more broadly, animal studies tends to examine individual or species-specific aspects. As a consequence, ecocriticism concentrates on ecopoetical, animal studies on zoopoetical elements and modes of representation in literature (and the arts more generally). Bringing key concepts of ecocriticism and animal studies into dialogue, the volume explores new ways of thinking about and reading texts, animals, and environments – not as separate entities but as part of the same collective
Feeling in the Dark: Ecology at the Edges of History (American Art, Fall 2014)
This essay focuses on Raptor’s Rapture (2012), a video by the Puerto Rico-based artists Allora & Calzadilla that relays a performative encounter between three figures: a musician specializing in prehistoric woodwinds, a 35,000 year old flute carved from the wingbone of a griffon vulture, and a live bird of the same species. This is one among a handful of pieces by contemporary artists that moves beyond the purely human-focused to engage what we might call the worldly. More precisely, these artworks illuminate entanglements between the human and the nonhuman as they unfold in time, signaling a dual rethinking of humans as natural—one among other species and surroundings—and nature as historical. In some cases, archaeological or geological time scales are invoked to this end; in others, it is a turn to matter or the nonhuman animal. (In Raptor’s Rapture, all of the above come into play.) At potential risk in this upscaling or transference of registers is the elision of crucial questions about various inequalities among humans; indeed, it is clear that environmental crises typically reinforce or exacerbate preexisting disparities between the rich and poor, the enfranchised and disenfranchised. Rather than addressing ecological or political ecological issues per se, however, the work discussed here trades a topical approach for one that operates in the realm of affect, or even the existential, suggesting that—in light of our immersion in an environmental catastrophe too big to apprehend— it is through probing the (indistinct) edges where human and worldly meet, that we might begin to feel our way.
It is thought that matter can be invoked through ineffable means, through forces of intuition, inspiration or reflection. From what fragile testimonies and bodily influences arouse. This paper is concerned with the interplay between encounter and insistence in the experimental philosophies of contemporary "emergent" science. It considers how the biological can persuade variations of life that generate natural, social and cultural existence. Through architectural and aesthetic tropes, the writing gestures towards an esoteric materiality as it considers the transformative momentum of bodies offered by advances in fertility science and in regenerative skin technologies, and explores the performative yet quiescent spaces of their lived negotiations. What was once thought the culturally artifactual body now grants artful access to scientific knowledge creation through its inherently unsettled nature and the attendance of alteration. Experimentally, this paper wonders if questions of corporeal ecology can be sustained in an era of scientific knowing (still) imbued with vulnerability.