2nd Draft of a critical review on “how theories around interconnectedness can open new ideas for making in contemporary art practice.”
Name of Essay: Concerning art and human and non-human entanglements
The essay was shared in Word with track/changes so my tutor could comment.
3rd Draft of critical review on the question, “How theories around interconnectedness can open new ideas for making in contemporary art practice?”
Date: 19 October 2023
Name of Essay: Concerning art and human and non-human entanglements
Introduction
For this part of my course, I aim to share an extended written project that provided a theoretical and contextual framework for my practice, culminating in a research question to be discussed in this essay. Entanglements between the human and non-human world will be explored as I ask if the interconnectedness between the human and non-human world can be explored through contemporary artwork.
My writing will use the theories of ecofeminist phenomenology and posthumanism as an assemblage to guide the reader to my material practice and the artists I have researched. The focus will be on the work of Donna Haraway and her ideas of transspecies assemblages (When Species Meet, 2008) as well as Le Guin who challenges traditional narratives of the heroic individual in the Carrier Bag Theory (1980) and Jane Bennet who in Vibrant Matter (2010) discusses the agency or vitality of matter. The artists I will bring in are part of a large group of artists who work concerning the posthuman; I will focus on a much smaller group of artists, namely Ana Mendieta, Claire Falkenstein, John Newling and Patricia Piccini and discuss their work in relation to my work. I will also weave in my reading on ideas around care by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, the philosophy of Ubuntu (indigenous wisdom) and the writers Val Kimerer , Merlin Sheldrake and Natasha Mayers, who focus on indigenous wisdom and teachings of plants together with scientific knowledge.
Posthumanism
I depart with the idea that Posthumanism rethinks humanity’s place in nature and technology. It critiques a dominant Western outlook on humanity, which has placed humans as independent of nature. I was encouraged by Dona Haraway, a leading thinker on kinships and multispecies communities, to challenge the idea of human identity. When she shared that our bodies are home to millions of microbes, bacteria and fungi, I could start visualising my body differently – becoming a flow of organic and synthetic material connecting me to the non-human world. Merlin Sheldrake (2021) shares a sensuous description of the presence of fungi and our human cohabitation. He explains that mycelium is like mesh – an entangled realm that surrounds us, some even living within us.
As part of a daily drawing practice, I drew my hand repeatedly over some time – increasingly, I became aware of the gentleness of gestures of holding and touching. The work below is a sculpture that was worked on alongside my drawing practice. I worked with Bongo clay and then inoculated the sculpture with mushroom spore. It was kept in a dark, humid space for the mycelium to grow. Growing fungi onto the sculpture has been a struggle due to fluctuations in temperatures and moisture. Care was an involved process of commitment and staying with a routine. This work, which is continuing, reminds me of Haraway’s ideas to see my body as part of the organic and synthetic materials that connect me to the non-human world.
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