The art of life beyond binaries: from artivism to ritual, queer ecology to magick.
“Let’s develop our power to tell yet another narrative, another story, if we manage, we will delay the end of the world.”
Ailton Krenak, 2020, Idées Pour retarder la Fin du Monde.
“The ecological crisis requires from us a new kind of culture because a major factor in its development has been the rationalist culture and the associated human/nature dualism characteristic of the West “
Val Plumwood, 2002. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason.
“To transition, to move from one state to another or to a different self-understanding, is not something only a few humans will do – it is imperative for all of us. Dissolving the reason/nature dualism is central to this universal task of transitioning. “
Gail Grossman Freyne. 2020. Transgender, An expanded view of the ecological self. *
From Trans theory to indigenous knowledges, from contemporary biology to the pagan revival, from anthropology to ecology, within the queer movements and in the physics laboratories, the consensus is clear, the pathological dualisms of modernity – individual/world, body/mind, male/female, fiction/reality – and of course the mother of all the dualisms: nature/culture – are not an accurate description of our worlds. In fact they come from deeply gendered colonial biases. These ontological dualisms violently disconnect us from everyday experience and existence. By placing the human (mostly male) on the top of the ladder of life, they have been responsible for much of the toxic behaviours, economic systems and beliefs that are pushing our lands, climate, bodies, seas and rivers into death spirals.
The art world, like the academy, has engaged with the critique of dualisms for a while now, but is it really stepping out of this ontology? Are contemporary artists really creating worlds where it is impossible to speak of nature and culture as separate? How does contemporary culture teach us to live fearlessly with and within difference? Is art really able to create experiences where self and world are entangled, or is its very DNA founded on dualisms?
During this think.zone (if we refuse to separate thinking from feeling, lets maybe call it a feelthink.zone) we will explore together – via bodies, play, texts, performances, experiences – the possibilities of radically changing the way we encounter beings and things, and ask what does a non-dualistic art practice look, feel, smell and sound like.
During full day experience based participatory workshops, we will explore how “art-as we know it”, this invention of the European colonial metropolis, emerging at the same moment that industrial capitalism begins around 1750, can be transformed into a non-dualistic practice that reconnects and re-enchants us. We will explore the possibilities ofreclaiming other world making tools from artivism to ritual, to help us transition out of this poly-crisis.
“what if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?”
Bayo Akomolafe, 2017, A Slower Urgency.
This Think.Zone is held in English.
Image: Autumn Equinox ritual, La Cellule d’Action Rituelle, La Zad de Notre-dame-des-Landes.
