----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Hi Julie
Thank you for the links to your work. Your descriptions of the crows “quiet
conversations” resonates for me and my approach to animals voices (that call
out, more-than just sound). I love your work, The Crows splashing conversation
is wonderful and I appreciated, too, how in the Wait piece you credit the dogs,
Tom and Sugi, with “concept, acting”. I’m looking forward to spending more time
with your work. Thinking about how we listen in and to the world, I’m very
moved by the writings of anthropologist Tim Ingold with his concept of
‘wayfaring' which attends to “the ground we walk, the ever-changing skies,
mountains and rivers, rocks and trees, the houses we inhabit and the tools we
use, not to mention the innumerable companions, both non-human animals and
fellow humans, with which and with whom we share our lives. They are constantly
inspiring us, challenging us, telling us things” (Being Alive: Essays on
Movement, Knowledge, and Description. London: Routledge 2011)
best
Norie
www.out-of-sync.com <http://www.out-of-sync.com/>
https://workingworms.net/ <https://workingworms.net/>
http://unlikely.net.au/ <http://unlikely.net.au/>
> On 11 Oct 2017, at 11:40 AM, Julie Andreyev <jandr...@ecuad.ca> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi Norie and soft-skins
>
> thank you for introducing me to your writing and to Catherine Clover. Your
> points remind us of the engrained speciesism of our culture that favors some
> animals over others. I’m referring to those who are ‘used’ for food, research
> labs, clothing, vs. those who are companions, and those who are regarded as
> ‘beautiful’ vs those who are pests. When we take the time to listen and look
> more thoroughly and mindfully, it becomes evident that those marginalized
> animals are also someone’s father, mother, brother, sister, daughter. They
> have communities and interests, cultures and traditions. The crows, and all
> the birds around my home, remind me of this. It is an ongoing practice of, as
> you say, unlearning and learning anew that must take place if we are to
> improve relations with other animals.
>
> We can bring in the practice of acoustic ecology into the mix in which we are
> asked to listen, to the sonic ecology of a location, and to how human
> listening and sound making are part of this collaborative biophony. Pauline
> Oliveros, Hildegard Westerkamp and R. Murray Shafer come to mind. Westercamp
> discusses listening as a way to join with our surroundings and to move away
> from isolation and towards connection. Here is a podcast of her’s
> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-opening-our-ears-can-open-our-minds-hildegard-westerkamp-1.3962163
>
> <http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-opening-our-ears-can-open-our-minds-hildegard-westerkamp-1.3962163>
>
> This is where I was going with the method of indeterminacy, that is similar
> to your unlearning and learning anew. It is a method first articulated by
> Fluxus artists of the mid-twentieth century whereby instructions for
> participatory art leave room for interpretation by participants, and thereby
> generate indeterminate outcomes. I am transposing this method into
> interspecies methods where, in my art processes with other animals, I tend to
> set up situations and invite them to participate. The aim is to do this
> without force. This involves respecting their right to refuse. Through
> respectful invitations, expanded seeing-listening can be generated anew.
>
> The crow couple taught me how to play with pebbles, and they revealed to me
> their quiet conversations between themselves. You can find a video from my
> Bird Park here http://julieandreyev.com/ph-d-research/
> <http://julieandreyev.com/ph-d-research/> where the couple have a little
> conversation about bathing.
>
> best
>
> Julie
>
>
>> On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:01 PM, Norie Neumark <nor...@mac.com
>> <mailto:nor...@mac.com>> wrote:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Hi Julie,
>> The concern about working with animals collaboratively but not harmfully is
>> so important for artists and it’s great to have this empyre discussion. In
>> response to your work with a free-living crow family, i’d like to tell you
>> about a wonderful Australian artist who works with birds. Catherine Clover
>> (http://ciclover.com/ <http://ciclover.com/>) works around listening and
>> unlearning — unlearning the ways we listen to listen — and relate — anew.
>>
>> I’ve written about Cath's work (in Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media
>> and the Arts) because it was one of the first works, along with Kathy High’s
>> enchanting Everyday Problems of the Living that really attuned me to the
>> possibilities and importance of the way artists collaborate with non-human
>> animals. I hope you don’t mind if I’m lazy here and just grab a bit from my
>> book:
>>
>> Catherine Clover has been making works for and with noisy, wild urban
>> birds for many years—listening, recording, translating, transcribing, reading
>> to them, performing for and with and after them, making books and
>> performances and installations. Like some of the scientists that Vinciane
>> Despret discussed (2004, 2013a and b), Clover seeks artistic practices
>> and ways to develop relationships of attunement with the birds. Her choice of
>> urban gulls and pigeons is deliberately not sentimental; instead of
>> ‘beautiful’ and mellifluous or even sublime birds, calling to us from the
>> ‘wild,’ she
>> works in a sort of minor mode (Ngai 2007; see also Manning 2016) with
>> despised and everyday species. These are birds with whom we share urban
>> space but often without noticing them, unless to bemoan their presence.
>> These are birds whose groupings we name as deadly and dirty—a murder of
>> crows, a filth of starlings, as the title of one of Clover’s works
>> reminds me (Clover 2012). Clover’s practice is multidisciplinary, working
>> with voice, sound, language,
>> visual art, installation, performance, and public art. Besides her
>> experiments with voice, she also works visually in a range of creative ways,
>> from the texts themselves, to overhead projections, to signage.
>> Clover’s mode is collaborative—with human performers and with avian
>> collaborators.
>> Her human collaborators perform and improvise the written word, which
>> includes her own translations and transcriptions of birds’ voices. Her
>> oeuvre is a tribute to the importance of learning anew, learning new
>> habits of listening and voice in interspecies relations—bringing new
>> understandings,
>> and practices of listening and voice—folding this listening back upon
>> itself through the field recordings and transcriptions and translations and
>> performances. Inspired particularly by Salomé Voegelin, Clover works
>> with listening as a way of becoming aware of “sharing space” and intertwining
>> lives and voices in urban spaces—becoming aware of what we have in
>> common with cohabitants in urban contexts. As Clover says of her work, her
>> concern is to “unlearn” her old ways of listening in order to hear the
>> birds’ calls “not as pleasant musical sounds, nor even as the sound of a
>> species,
>> but as distinct communication between individuals living their lives
>> inclose proximity to mine” (Clover 2015b, 33).
>>
>> Check out her work on her website — no birds suffer in the making of her
>> work!
>> best
>> Norie
>>
>>> On 11 Oct 2017, at 4:28 AM, Julie Andreyev <jandr...@ecuad.ca
>>> <mailto:jandr...@ecuad.ca>> wrote:
>>>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>> Hi Margaretha, Meredith and -empyre- soft skinned space,
>>>
>>> Thank you for inviting me as a Discussant for this week’s topics. I am
>>> responding to Margaretha’s question in the introduction about justice in
>>> encounters with more-than-human others. I’d like to enter here, by pointing
>>> broadly to the challenges and potentials offered by encounters with other
>>> animals. Ben, in his response to the topic brought up the history of
>>> exploitive relations with other animals and the problems these produced for
>>> the animals involved, and for the degradation of human empathy. The
>>> utilization of other beings for the benefit of humans even finds itself
>>> into art practices, such as with some bioart and art involving other
>>> animals in gallery settings. Artist working within these genres continue to
>>> employ harmful and even lethal methods, generally holding an
>>> anthropocentric view on animals, plants and microbes as living materials;
>>> these artists arguing for freedom of expression.
>>>
>>> This is the starting point for my own art research and practice that asks,
>>> how to generate post-anthropocentric aesthetics, as discourse and applied
>>> methods, that model respectful empathetic forms of relating with other
>>> creatures and the ecologies we share? The methods I am particularly drawn
>>> to for their empathetic potential are interspecies collaboration, and
>>> interspecies participation. My work over the past decade has explored
>>> processes with dogs, salmon, and forest ecologies.
>>>
>>> http://julieandreyev.com/epic-tom/ <http://julieandreyev.com/epic-tom/>
>>> http://julieandreyev.com/salmon-people/
>>> <http://julieandreyev.com/salmon-people/>
>>> http://julieandreyev.com/biophilia/
>>>
>>> Recently I been working with a free-living crow family that lives in the
>>> territory that includes my home. The interactions with the crows have
>>> included working with stones as an interface for communications and
>>> creativity between us. http://julieandreyev.com/crow-stone-tone-poem/
>>>
>>> What I have found in all of these interspecies instances is that ethics of
>>> care, that includes respect for autonomy is critical for developing
>>> improved (non-exploitive) relations. As well, building in indeterminacy
>>> methods, by being open to the contributions of other lifeforms leads to
>>> surprises in terms of creativity, and this can lead to greater empathy on
>>> the part of humans.
>>>
>>> I look forward to additions and comments
>>>
>>> cheers
>>>
>>> Julie Andreyev
>>>
>>>> On Oct 9, 2017, at 3:06 PM, margaretha haughwout
>>>> <margaretha.anne.haughw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>> Dear -empyre- soft skinned space,
>>>>
>>>> Randall, Lisette, Valentine and Antonio have enlivened a rich terrain for
>>>> us to continue our conversation and our work. I am so grateful to Randall
>>>> for introducing a critical lexicon for ecoaesthetic systems, a lexicon
>>>> that draws out the ways that the neoliberal art system (much like the
>>>> draining industrial agriculture model) must be subsumed by a soil
>>>> practice; to Lissette for reminding us that the multispecies work we do is
>>>> wholly anti-disciplinary, with anti-colonial potential, and is tied to the
>>>> Black Radical tradition, to queer and trans*activism, and feminism; to
>>>> Valentine for asking how "to practice relating to communities of more
>>>> distant soil," how to "live in myriad relations without losing out shit";
>>>> to Antonio for writing in about agroecology and peasant solidarity -- a
>>>> few of many points to acknowledge how generative and *grounding* Week One
>>>> has been. I am confident these ideas will continue to be at play in the
>>>> coming weeks, and I hope all of you will be able to continue to write in.
>>>>
>>>> I am so excited to introduce a new set of discussants into the mix, and to
>>>> begin conversations on the theme/s of Mediated Natures, Speculative
>>>> Futures and Justice. Welcome Julie Andreyev (CA), Grisha Coleman (US),
>>>> Desert Art Lab -- April Bojorquez (US) and Matt Garcia (US)-- Meredith
>>>> Drum (US), Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa (US). We will also receive posts
>>>> about projects from guests Tyler Fox (US) and Jordan Yerman (CA) later in
>>>> the week. Once again I'd like to thank Meredith Drum for helping me to
>>>> work out ideas for this month and for inviting in such distinguished
>>>> guests as Grisha Coleman, and Desert Art Lab.
>>>>
>>>> What are the ways that afrofuturism, speculative fabulation and science
>>>> fiction influence our practices of multispecies worlding and ecological
>>>> art, as well as how we understand the influence or use of media and
>>>> technology when encountering nonhuman others? The threads between all of
>>>> your work is fascinating -- you all are deeply influenced by SF, use or
>>>> study technology and media, and also insist on justice. How do these
>>>> threads intertwine for you?
>>>>
>>>> As well, how can we understand terms like justice, solidarity, ethics,
>>>> survival, radicality in the Capitalocene? What are the stakes, the costs
>>>> and the possible futures for different ecologies and the humans that live
>>>> amongst them?
>>>>
>>>> This week's theme can also extend the conversations begun last week around
>>>> systems +/or/vs. entanglements, managing and mourning and the many other
>>>> lines of thought begun by Randall, Lissette, Valentine and the larger
>>>> community of -empyre- (Norie, WIlliam, Melinda, Elaine and everyone).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Warmly,
>>>> -Margaretha
>>>>
>>>> ++
>>>>
>>>> Week 2 Discussants
>>>> Julie Andreyev
>>>> Julie Andreyev’s art practice, called Animal Lover, www.animallover.ca,
>>>> explores more-than-human creativity using methods of ethics of care,
>>>> respect, and play. The projects are output as new media performance, video
>>>> installation, generative art, and relational aesthetics. The Animal Lover
>>>> projects have been shown internationally, and are supported by the Canada
>>>> Council for the Arts and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
>>>> Council of Canada. Andreyev recently completed her PhD at Simon Fraser
>>>> University, Vancouver, supported by a Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral
>>>> Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
>>>> Canada. Her dissertation, Biophilic Ethics and Creativity with
>>>> More-Than-Human Beings, is an interdisciplinary investigation into an
>>>> expansion of ethics for more-than-human beings, examined through
>>>> interspecies relational creativity in art processes. Andreyev is Associate
>>>> Professor in the Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media at Emily Carr
>>>> University of Art + Design.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Grisha Coleman
>>>> Grisha Coleman works as a choreographer and composer in performance and
>>>> experiential media. Her work explores relationships between our
>>>> physiological, technological and ecological systems. She currently holds
>>>> the position of Associate Professor of Movement, Computation and Digital
>>>> Media in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, and the School of
>>>> Dance at Arizona State University. Her recent art and scholarly work,
>>>> echo::system, is a springboard for re-imagining the environment,
>>>> environmental change, and environmental justice. Coleman is a New York
>>>> City native with an M.F.A. in Composition and Integrated Media from the
>>>> California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been recognized nationally
>>>> and internationally; including a 2012 National Endowment Arts in Media
>>>> Grant [NEA], the 2014 Mohr Visiting Artist at Stanford University, a
>>>> fellowship at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon
>>>> University, and grants from the Rockefeller M.A.P Fund, The Surdna
>>>> Foundation, and The Creative Capital Foundation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Meredith Drum
>>>> With artist Rachel Stevens, Meredith Drum co-created The Oyster City
>>>> Project – a constellation of projects and events that draw attention to
>>>> relationships between urban marine ecology, urban planning, neighborhood
>>>> life, politics, economics and environmental justice. One component of
>>>> Oyster City is an AR walking tour and game featuring 3D objects and text
>>>> in real space visible with an iOS device that highlights the history and
>>>> future of oysters in New York City. Another is the Fish Stories Community
>>>> Cookbook a collection of seafood recipes, local histories, stories,
>>>> drawings and ecological information contributed by people who live and
>>>> work in the Lower East Side of NYC. Fish Stories was commissioned by Paths
>>>> to Pier 42 in 2015.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa
>>>> Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa is a PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media at
>>>> University of California Santa Cruz. His dissertation "The Celluloid
>>>> Specimen: Moving Image Research of Animal Life" focuses on the animal
>>>> research films made by behavioral psychology during the 1920s, 30s, and
>>>> 40s. His essay “Celluloid Specimens: Animal Origins for the Moving Image,”
>>>> is being published in the forthcoming book Viscera, Skin, and Physical
>>>> Form: Corporeality and Early Cinema. Schultz-Figueroa has curated and
>>>> screened works at such venues as Anthology Film Archives, Light Industry,
>>>> Artists’ Television Access, Northwest Film Forum, and The Shanghai
>>>> Biennial, and his writing has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Culture
>>>> Machine, and Photomeditations Machine.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Desert ArtLAB
>>>> Desert ArtLAB is dedicated to a social art practice, explores connections
>>>> between ecology, culture and community. Through multimedia performance,
>>>> visual and social art, the collaborative reconceptualizes desert and
>>>> dryland ecologies not as post-apocalyptic growth of wasteland, but as an
>>>> ecological opportunity. The collaborative’s projects activate public
>>>> space, promoting ecological restoration, dryland food practice, and a new
>>>> understanding of living in desert environments. The collaborative’s work
>>>> has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: IAIA Museum
>>>> of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, and the
>>>> Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris, France).
>>>>
>>>> - April Bojorquez is an independent curator and artist based in the Bay
>>>> Area and Southern Colorado. Working within the intersection of art and
>>>> anthropology, Bojorquez employs diverse strategies to produce immersive
>>>> and interactive environments exploring place, identity and museum
>>>> practices. She is fellow of the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Museum
>>>> Studies Program and a former curator of art at the National Hispanic
>>>> Cultural Center. Bojorquez is a 2016 Creative Capital Awardee in Emerging
>>>> Fields.
>>>>
>>>> - Matt Garcia’s artistic practice investigates ecology, its relationship
>>>> to knowledge systems and how media can connect communities to a reclaiming
>>>> or re-imagining of lost epistemology. Garcia is currently an assistant
>>>> professor of Art and Design at Dominican University of California.
>>>> Garcia’s work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues
>>>> such as: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris, France), The
>>>> International Symposium on Electronic Art (2012, 2015), Balance-Unbalance
>>>> Festival (Noose, Australia), and HASTAC (Lima, Peru). He is a 2016
>>>> Creative Capital Awardee in Emerging Fields.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Week 2 Special Guests
>>>> Tyler Fox
>>>> Tyler Fox is an artist, researcher, technologist and educator. He is a
>>>> Lecturer in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of
>>>> Washington. His work is centered on the attempt to create shared
>>>> experiences between humans and nonhumans, both living and nonliving. His
>>>> draws inspiration from the philosophies of Gilbert Simondon and Alfred
>>>> North Whitehead to create speculative artworks that help us think and feel
>>>> alongside of nonhumans.Tyler received his PhD from the School of
>>>> Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, an MFA from
>>>> the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland and BAs in Art
>>>> History and the Comparative History of Ideas at the University of
>>>> Washington.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jordan Matthew Yerman
>>>> Jordan Matthew Yerman is a Vancouver-based artist and writer who has
>>>> worked and created from Reykjavik to Tokyo. He explores the experiences of
>>>> feral cats as a metric of urban measurement, while assessing the embodied
>>>> practice of engaging such furtive subjects. He documents cities through
>>>> the lived experiences of their inhabitants, be they human or otherwise. He
>>>> imposes interventions upon his images to explore how those inhabitants—and
>>>> those who view them—embody the changes in their built environments. In
>>>> collaboration with Leigh M. Smith, he created Street Cat Photo Booth,
>>>> consisting of networked shelter environments scaled for feline use. These
>>>> autonomous photo booths allow urban cats to initiate their own
>>>> social-media photo shoots, recontextualizing the role these animals play
>>>> in our perceptions of urbanity and neighborhood.
>>>> Yerman’s work has been entered three times into the proceedings and
>>>> catalogue of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA); and his
>>>> work has been published by the Vancouver Observer, APEX Experience
>>>> Magazine, Wallpaper*, Travel+Leisure, Akihabara News, Tokyo INSIGHT
>>>> Magazine, the Vancouver Sun, Daily Hive, Vancouver Courier, Gripped,
>>>> Spaced.ca, Manager Magazine, Love Meow, Canadian Avalanche Journal, and
>>>> Buzzfeed.
>>>> He partnered with Fujifilm to photograph cats across Japan, and takes
>>>> high-stakes cat photos for Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue, helping
>>>> abandoned cats find new homes. He studied at UC San Diego, University of
>>>> Exeter, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
>>>> Street Cat Photo Booth has been demonstrated in New York, Vancouver, Hong
>>>> Kong, Tokyo, and Manizales, Colombia. The Street Cat Project has shot in
>>>> Japan, Iceland, Hong Kong, Israel, Canada, Italy, Guatemala, Colombia, and
>>>> the United States.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> beforebefore.net
>>>> guerrillagrafters.org
>>>> coastalreadinggroup.com
>>>> --
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> <mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
