We kicked off the study period with a session looking into nature, paying attention to non-human relationships that could inspire new ways of thinking.
The session involved:
- memory and location mapping exercise: connecting the body, memories, places and imagination, a process used by Ghost & John to develop their work Meniscus.
- watching excerpts of My Octopus Teacher and Our Planet, touching on anthropomorphism and the theory of mind.
- looking at hierarchies and interconnections between species and comparing them with society and more specifically the art world. This section involved: exploring keystone species (what would be the keystone species in an art ecology?); reading an excerpt from “The Second Body” by Daisy Hildyard about sharing resources between ‘abled’ bacteria cells and ‘disabled’ bacteria cells; watching a video excerpt of Examined Life with Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor on disability in society.
- we touched on deep ecology and activism, looking at ‘self-realisation’, less human-centric thinking and discussing the problems/concerns with creating art about environmental issues (exploitation vs raising awareness). Case studies we looked at were: Among the Trees exhibition and HS2 Rebellion, Liberate Tate, UN’s ‘Love song to the earth’ and Lil Dicky’s ‘Earth’ (for addition context click here).
In this session we discussed: permeable kinship, capitalism and how it affects interdependence, the precariousness of making a living as an artist, the difficulty of changing institutions and indigenous wisdom of asking the land for permission, how to create a different paradigm and what are we (human/artists) giving back to the environment.
The session ended with the whole group writing down what they would like to do if they had unlimited resources, money, space time and energy (image below, highlighted text indicated activities involving art).
Extended reading for this session:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/art-climate-change.html
