Building Common Ground
Ecological Art Practices and Human-Nonhuman Knowledges
edited by
abstract
This volume examines the entanglements between contemporary art practices, ecology, and non-human subjects through contributions from scholars, art writers, critics, artist-researchers and designers. The collected essays reveal contemporary art’s potential to reorient epistemological and ontological coordinates amid ecological and existential crises, questioning human exceptionalism and the exploitative logics of extractivism and planetary industrialization. Central to the volume are issues of environmental degradation and violence, racial capitalism, colonial legacies, the emergence of the Anthropocene, in relation to the diverse terrain of contemporary art practices. Emphasizing the agency of more-than-human collaborators, from animals to microbial ecologies, and from oceans to nuclear waste, these practices expose injustices, reclaim damaged ecosystems, and propose alternative ways of being in and with the planet. Artist-researchers contribute perspectives that open up new avenues for knowledge creation in the disrupted landscapes of the Anthropocene, pointing to symbiotic relationships between humans and non-human entities that are only beginning to be explored. By sharing theoretical frameworks and languages, the artists’ and writers’ contributions make clear that the environmental crises impacting the ecosystems require new collaborations to build common epistemological grounds, and shared visions of planetary futures.
Archiving method • Environment • Materiality • Contemporary art • Ecological art practices • Multispecies • Plantationocene • Cosmopolitics • Regionalism • Nuclear knowledge • Blackbird • Coppice • Water • Woodland • Multispecies studies • Visitation • Ecology • Ecosystems • Pluriversal ontologies • Art practices • Architecture • Speculative practices • Biopolitics • Radioactive legacies • Vernacular design • Mimicry • Imagining otherwise • Narratives • Anthropocene • Ecomaterialism • Permaculture • Eco-art • Spores • Networks • Re-worlding • Non-human animals • Cultural heritage-making • Racialized labour • Colonialism • Aurality • Extraction • Migration • Birdsong • Platforms • Mediterranean Sea • Visual Art • Toxicity • Synesthesia