THIS SECTION TRACES THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RESEARCH QUESTION OVER TIME
“We are all one question and the best answer seems to be love - a connection between things. This arcane bit of knowledge is respoken everyday”
— Mary Ruefle,“Someone Reading a Book is a Sign of Order in the World” in ‘Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures 2003.”
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(British Library, reading Multi Species studies, Environmental Humanities Vol 8.1, 2016. P.2)
From their intro:
”How do different knowledge practices - different modes of attentive immersion - bring different worlds into being?”
Could work with this idea of attentive immersion.
The Q in my practice is something like
Towards a multi species sensibility: How can an arts practice using the study of Lepidoptera as an entry point contribute to the questioning of human boundary constructs in the Anthropocene?
- does this mean I am not foregrounding making so much…?
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IF making, manipulating materials as a means of understanding the world (Ingold) is an essential human quality, how can this urge speak to, address the change in perspective required in order to address the damage that we are doing to other than human nature through our actions.
Q: How can the material language, which draws ‘inspiration’ from, is inspired by and uses nature as a resource, speak to this area?
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Useful for language and framing - this is Jane Wildgoose’s question format:
“How may an artists’ practice-based comparative study (of the collection and interpretation of…..) contribute to public understanding of… (the legacy and unique status ascribed to human remains…)”
Her aims and objectives are all strong active words:
‘“Extend the frame of reference,
“Contribute to a new understanding of…
“Investigate and present...a body of new evidence…
“Assess the significance of…
“Compare the subjective and objective approaches of… as a means of examining different attitudes to ….
- She also “addresses invisibility and untold stories” “Which (hi)stories are told and how, and which (hi)stories are not told and why?” ‘What is the new story, and who is helping to build it?’ THIS IS USEFUL TO ME.
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Q: How can a study of ‘other than human nature’ inform a textile art practice which seeks to decentre the human in perceptions of ecology?
How is the ‘purpose’ of nature interpreted…
How can this textile art practice communicate alternative perspectives on the requirements of/relations between other-than-human nature?
How have theories of hierarchy developed in human nature relations, and what are the consequences of this?
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Q: Making as a response to thinking about nature - how can I shed light on and use this process to challenge the way we, and suggest new (‘or reimagined old’ as Kate would say) ways to, think about ourselves as humans in relation to nature?
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( After recent conversations, at Better Lives event 220518, and reflecting on supervision notes year 3)
- Eldina at Better Lives: “How can we think about big questions and apply them to little things?”
“Fashion needs to diversify and hybridise and distance itself from the commercial realm’.
Q: Can the object speak about environmental justice for the other-than-human?
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(DILYS: are you looking at the role of materials in the creative process, and how you can have a design process that has different ambitions - broader ambitions, not that it is non-material, but the place of materials is relational to other things?)
Materials as mediator rather than the end game. Materials and making as mediator for feeling with the other-than-human?
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Q: How do we change our thinking? Am I testing ways of people changing their relationship with the rest of nature?
I was talking about trying out different ways of getting people to engage with ideas of nonhuman or more than human nature, and whether that can change people’s way of thinking –
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What can be communicated through objects that I make? A tactile conversation…
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It is more about ways of thinking about how we relate to the environment, the object is just one means of communicating this, it’s about the relating.
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re. ‘Moth as method’
Q: What does ‘becoming-(with) the moth’ mean? Does it mean plant power, superhero-ness, the night, the moon, pheromones, being blown on the wind ...starving?
Q: How does a study of the moth enlarge our sense of what it means to be alive? Recalibrate this?
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Framing of questions, aims and obs. at RNUAL week Confirmation presentations:
- What is addressed through the practice?
Sasha, Curatorial ethics: “What is understood by…? What is the role of…? how is….established?”
Tobias, Graphic novels: Aims and obs. = “Trace development of…Delineate purpose of… Explore agendas of… How does …. relate to….?”
Gustavo: Investigate, Survey, Develop, Examine, Identify…
Zenan Yu, moving image an Taosim: “ To develop an approach to… To critically assess…”
Viveka, Women in gardens in film: “ How are women represented in… Whose view is it… how is nostalgia embodied in…”
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The contribution to knowledge will be in the area of demonstrating how research can be filtered through practice, a methodology? Specifically regarding the anthropocene and recalibrating our sense of environmental entanglement…? How to manifest ideas? Materialise belief? Is it belief that you are materialising? Is it not more questions? Materialising questions?
... a methodology or a new way of approaching, raising awareness, of sustainability issues, disrupting the urge to consume, re engage with nature.
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The Q - the urge to make : Part of it is about the urge to make, and the morality or ethics of that in the Anthropocene, and one of the intentions is to communicate a decentering of the human within our approach to nature, use an inversion to wake our sympathy or conscience of the unintended consequences of our actions when treating the environment as a resource.
November 2017
QUESTIONING HUMAN BOUNDARY CONSTRUCTS - SEE THE DES NAT ABSTRACT FOR THE EXACT WORDING…
25 October 2017
Dilys: Is your subject human making? The object as mediator of relationships rather than as subject?
KP: The subject is 'what role can Making play in changing the way we think about our relationship to the environment'. By inverting the human view, imagining the requirements of non-human life.
The question is: How can we
- Challenge ideas of human supremacy over the rest of nature, using the hand crafted artefact?
- Create and test a series of experimental practices to decentre the human.
What do you want to do? I want to use inversion to raise awareness of, and challenge the human boundary constructs which inform our abusive relationship with ‘nature’.
16 October 2017
What will evolve in our plastic world?
What will adapt, absorb, and grow out of the landfill? In a fundamentally altered geology - the extracted, discarded, ‘single-use’ landscape - through the process of breaking down, ingesting and reclaiming molecules, what qualities will be expressed?
Perhaps we are already living this process, and it is prosaic rather than apocalyptic?
(Developed in to written text for Supervision meeting 25 October 2017 "Reflections on practice")
ADD IMAGES: Helen Marten?
- So the question in the practice is about exploring an environment that is piecing itself back together, recombining materials, perhaps unwittingly/unavoidably ingesting them - a sort of reverse Frankenstein's monster. What will this environment or culture be like? Is it 'post human'? Are other intelligences at work - a paradigm shift where, for example, the insects, are rebuilding the fabric of the environment.
- Primo Levi, The Periodic Table. Finding a kind of existential comfort in the notion of atoms sublimating, recombining, being remade...FIND EXAMPLE - REREAD.
10 October 2017
The Companion Object:
Creates a dialogue with/about our relationship to 'nature'/ the environment/ nonhuman life through craft, through materiality. (This is where the muteness idea comes in - visual, or other silent languages).
A practice-based enquiry, using lepidoptera as a case study ( Should this word be in my title?)
Companion is good, in the sense of the dialogue, and the non-human, the 'familiar' or daemon - but do these all anthropo (gyno?)-morphise? But, if you accept the more porous boundaries of humanity as 'relationality' in a Haraway and even Morton sense, "We" (Is this Matthew Gandy's 'Neovitalism'?) or perhaps 'aliveness' is a better word, then you can incorporate those living parts both as OTHER, and/or perhaps a neglected, alternative half of the self (shadow). This could also relate to the twinning/pairing idea in the Object dialogue.
Object: In the sense of materiality, made thing, artefact, which somehow materialises this 'other' (? moth spirit?)
So, not necessarily something that you carry around (talisman) - because of all the connotations of functionality and display, and human focus that that brings.
The Companion Object uses pairing, juxtaposition of contrasting forms
The Companion Object pairs contrasting forms to initiate a dialogue about nature
The Companion Object is a pairing of contrasted forms, which create a dialogue through juxtaposition
Q: (How) can a craft practice develop a dialogue about -
- is it a dialogue though? Where is the back and forth? Imagined in our head? But, see notes form holiday in Skye (Sep 17) about the feeling of 'reading' the landscape ***ADD THESE***
This goes back to the Holbraad article, "Can the thing speak?" extended cognition and anthropology, shamanism... is 'nature' "mute"?
Keywords: Craft, Environment, Nature, Dialogue, Moth - Lepidoptery, Companion? Object. Artefact? Fashion = OUT! CompLanion? As in non-hierarchical, the opposite of Primate - with a hint of complaining, the Companion Objector?
Q: How can a craft practice engage environmental theory to...
How can an environmentally engaged craft practice...
Can the moth speak? ??
How can a craft practice engage a dialogue about our connection to nature?
How we think of ourselves and nature
- The journey from object to...
THEMES: Devoured Nourished/Devoured Craft & Nature
9 October 2017
Q: How can a study of lepidoptera inform creative practice?
A response to living with nonhuman nature. The urban nature thing is important here, look at Matthew Gandy and ERC RUN again, in light of nature-culture ideas. Abney Park Cemetery, and the Geo-Humanities hub at Royal Holloway. Harriet Hawkings. Maybe start by writing up what practice is doing, and what the 'Nature-Culture' talks, events, collaborations might encompass - themes of talks on moths, tree walks (with @thestreettree) plant dye workshops, urban foraging ( can you dye fabrics with fungi?) , but also materials themes, and weather, and seasons, birds, migration, food. The NatureCulture idea is about light touch events which bring design/fashion/art/film into the conversation about environmental issues in an urban context.
Look at the format of other practice based researches to see if can find inspiring approaches...
19 June 2017
The idea of the dialogue, of the object opening up a dialogue with the (human) viewer, wearer, might need to be investigated (and in the light of the Daniel Rubinstein reference below!)
Dialogue has a specific meaning in philosophy - Socratic dialogue, a careful unpicking of assumptions using a series of questions building logically on from each other. Drill into this a bit more - what does/will this 'dialogue' about nature consist of?
Feb 20 2017
What is the material language of the research practice? How does the material language of the Chthulucene (Haraway) develop? Or, how do you express this notion of "multi-species becoming-with" - a mixture of science fiction/speculation. It includes an acceptance of the mixing and recombining of materials.
i can develop this in the Frankenstein theme in practice - the idea of what will evolve when human activity has stopped being so active, and other life forms are interacting with the detritus, recombining it in new ways. See Theme in practice.
Feb 15 2017
Daniel Rubinstein in The Art of Questioning seminar: "Questions to do with intention are very hard to answer (and so make BAD phD questions!)"
Jan 20 2017
Finding a language to talk with the moth? Interpreting the moth? (This could go back much earlier, last year, 'Animus')
What is the intention or animus ( agency) of the moth? 'Can the moth speak?'
This sounds mad - but is this what the practice is about?
So there might be two parallel questions: one is about the role of making in the Anthropocene, and the specific practice one is about finding a physical, visual language to reveal the moth ideas...
9 Nov 2016
The ‘becoming other’ of my question?
After Daniel Rubinstein, The Art of Questioning 3: ADD!!!!
Is the ‘other’ the idea of circular economy? It could be the opposite in the sense that it bypasses the real problem, it is a thing people grasp on to because t seems do able, and it doesn’t really challenge our habits of consumption as fundamentally as the thesis I might be exploring - where, in using less, we fundamentally alter our relationship to consumption, of in this case, fashion artefacts.
21 September 2016
The urge to make – the place for it in the Anthropocene?
Can it, the artefact, the process, be used to discuss our connection to nature, how nature works, make us more aware of our impact on nature, our place in the world?
EXPAND...
22 March 2016
Title at Application for Registration.
The Companion Object: How can fashion artefacts reconnect us with nature?
October 2015
(From Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge. p.9:)
“The question is: what difference does it make if discussion is grounded in a context of practical activity?”
How to frame the reflective value of craft practice as research in the question…
Original title for the deferred proposal accepted in March 2014:
Deep fashion: craft values as transformative tools to create new relationships with fashion artefacts, and more sustainable futures for consumers and makers in the UK.