Research abstract
‘The Companion Object: A material dialogue with ‘nature’
If the problem of the Anthropocene is one of how to be, rather than how to act (Maggs & Robinson, 2016) examining the role of creativity in an age of ecological destruction leads to a more profound rethinking of what it means to be human itself.
One of the purposes of art and design might be to develop practices through which we can question human boundary constructs, to challenge our ideas about ‘nature’.
Many strands of ecological philosophy, drawing in physics, biology and feminism, explore the idea of the Posthuman. They arrive at a similar view, expressed in very different ways: relationality (Barad, 2007), multispecies becoming-with (Haraway, 2016), solidarity with nonhumans (Morton, 2016). Survival, or “ongoingness,” entails fostering a sense of ‘self’ which includes intimate ‘kinship’ with nonhuman nature.
Inhabiting this more porous sense of being alive, we may experience our actions as a form of ‘self-harm’. Could this dissolve the cognitive rift which seems to paralyse privileged nations from feeling sufficiently the negative effects of human actions, which we so efficiently document? (Conrad et al., 2006).
This research seeks to add to a growing body of alternative practices which promote adaptation to foster resilience and well-being. It will do so by testing two speculative approaches for reactivating engagement with the other-than-human world.
One path embraces “profoundly, madly letting go” (Meadows, 1999). Using the lives of native Lepidoptera as an entry point, the ‘moth journey’ traces an alternative creative process: from seeing ‘nature as resource’, to ecological ‘accompanying-with’.
The second attempts to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016) by forging a renewed engagement with materials. It originates the concept of the Companion Object, an artefact which materialises a critical dialogue with the human. This path inverts the textile vocabulary of domesticity and repair to speak of creatures usually associated with nuisance and damage, in order to explore the consequences of human destruction and neglect.
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Conrad, K.F., Warren, M.S., Fox, R., Parsons, M., Woiwod, I.P. (2006) Rapid declines of common, widespread British moths provide evidence of an insect biodiversity crisis. Biological Conservation, 132(3), pp. 279–291. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2006.04.020.
Haraway, D. J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press Books.
Maggs, D., Robinson, J. and International Association for Environmental Philosophy (2016) ‘Recalibrating the Anthropocene: Sustainability in an Imaginary World’, Environmental Philosophy, 13(2), pp. 175–194. doi: 10.5840/envirophil201611740.
Meadows, H.D. (1999). Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - The Donella Meadows Project Available at: http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ (Accessed: 14 March 2018)
Morton, T. (2016) Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. Columbia University Press.