CONTEXTUALISATION- writing week

URSULA LE GUIN - THEORY OF THE CARRIER BAG
- writing as collecting
- reading is writing
- the navel is the carrier bag
- if you’re only using the absolute you’re leaving out a lot of other perspectives
- where are things gathered from? what makes the gathering possible? 
- who is to say what is needless (in terms of editing)? the text? how does the text work and what does it need ? 
- Barthes - regards Text as a constant ‘weaving’ process - the text is a tissue, a woven fabric, the reader is the fabricator (in terms of imagination, the reader fabricates/imagines what it is weaving)
- Life = society 
- voice = individual/group
- body = nature
- the space WHERE the carrier bag is = storytelling around the fire is different from stories gathered in a book. 
- how do you write about non-language? 
- Zong - M NaurbeSe Philip = a narrative that she doesn’t want/can’t tell- story can only be told by not telling. see artists references.
- form is shaped by text itself. 
- Tender buttons - Gertrude Stein (the things that are NOT there in the text are just as important). see artists references.
-Tyranny of reality
- what is left out/not written= negative space
- writing with doubt: making the reader doubt vs inviting the reader to doubt with me. 
- storytelling for earthly survival - doc about donna haraway
- zong - book about narrative setup (maybe useful for ‘silk cotton tree’ artist book?)

THESIS WRITING - doesn’t necessarily need to explain the work, the work is doing it. have a narrative that relates to the work, associative and relational. (obs! but that’s still too broad!)

CONTEXTUALISATION- writing week

NICHOLAS NORTON - art critic
- art critic - opinions about artworks,a rtist, etc... based on INTERPRETATION
- balance between objective + subjective writing, descriptive and non-descriptive. 
- process of writing review- focus description and interpretation
- PROCESS: press release about upcoming shows, 4/5 shows, pitch to the editor then go back to see the show
- own ethics about who to write about - if did a curated show then don’t write about those artists.
- who are you writing for - who is the reader - 
- few days to write , 1/2 rounds with editor. 
 -looking is interpreting - as soon as we start describing what we see, we1re in subjective territory.
- description is NEVER neutral
- he distances himself from the artist, doesn’t show the artist’s POV. 
- how are things presented? is there an overall mood? what details gives this mood? are questions he asks himself. 
- what phenomena aside from the work itself is the art related to. 
- through evaluation we can let the reader know why we find this interesting or not. Hopefully our description will allow the reader to understand how we came to that conclusion, whether they agree or not. 
argue for and against
- using references can be associative, explicit or not explicit in the text
- how to write about contemporary art, Gilda Williams


THESIS WRITING
- writing layers in order
- give answers, what does the reader need in order to follow your train of thoughts in the writing
- try not to be too general, be specific
description vs interpretation
- STRUCTURE HOW I WRITE/PRESENT - stream of consciousness 
- possible to apply poetic/fictional storytelling writing. check in the library for past thesis. 
- doesn’t have to be super academic
- Master thesis = the story of these two years of masters. 
- if choosing to write ficition or in an eccentric way, then you need to show why


CONTEXTUALISATION- Lecture 2
Bodies of water - 18.10

- Body in relation to the art
 -contemporary art + environmental thought
 -rethinking æsthetics- æsthetics as experience, weather, atmosphere. WEATHER AS EXPERIENCE
- pressing ecological questions_ re-imagine embodiment from the perspectives of bodily fluids and water: 
        -challenges our definitions
        -our bodies our relational to our surroundings
        therefore inseperable from pressing ecological questions
-posthuman feminist phenomenology= bodies are part of natural world and not separated from/privileged above nature
-anthropocentrism= humans are above/privileging themselves above nature and everything else, anthropocene also does this. 
- WE HAVE NEVER BEEN ONLY HUMAN - Bruno Latour (LINK TO WHAT I WAS THINKING OF, THAT WE NEED TO LEARN/RE-LEARN PAST CRAFTS AND TIME TO DO THINGS) 
- new revival of body and relational art to art in the 60s - land art ? 
- Body + embodiment is central to Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception
- Phenomenology = philosophy of experience. structure of (æsthetic) experience: imagination, situatedness, relation to other people (BUT THIS IS ONLY FROM HUMAN BODIES PERSPECTIVE)
- Ecology (Christina Sharpe) = the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another + to their physical surroundings, the political movement that seeks to protect the environment, espeically from pollution. 
- rhyzomatics of Gilles Deleuze - agency + subjectivity evolves in relation to one another. We are not static beings we are always in relation to another. 
- anti-essentialism + feminist theory 
- ecriture feminine
- biology essentialism - we’re born with the gender we’re assigned (assigned by whom, by our sex?)
- nature-cultures (Haraway)
- where does earth belong to/who owns earth’s natural resources?
- the water crisis as a social crisis (how do you define social)
- in my writing, use the definition to suit my point. 
- Astrida Neimanis: water is not simply something ‘out there’, but also a commodity, backdrop, resource, etc... all related, never separate from our reality. 
- more curious about our politics of location: where is my body? when is it? why is it? thanks to what and whom? 
- nature-culture= bodies are always biological and cultural (Haraway) 
- paying attention to terms: local/global, now/then, mine/theirs, etc... 
- How do we re-think relations b/w humans and animals, earth and humans, non-humans and humans, etc... THROUGH STORIES
-Carolina Caycedo - Be damned . the work is installed with the people into the gallery
    - ‘Connecting’ artist- conversations with people, shaman, etc... about the river, privatization of the river, links to non-human relations to rivers, etc... (All encompassing-ness of everything related to the river in relation to the topic- privatization of river (link to guardian of the forest? what’s the ‘topic’ here))


see full transcript of notes here.


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CONTEXTUALISATION- Lecture 2
Bodies of water - Seminar- 19.10

- Using quotes and theories- Astrida, she defines based on these theories and takes it further, makes a framework and then takes it further. 
    -quite personal way of writing, (add in my stories heard all around into my writing?)
- relations/connections but also separation and differentiation 

- ‘a feminist posthumanism is a deeply ethical orientation. The kinds of ontologies it inaugurates - connected, indebted, dispersed, relational - are not only about connecting a phallogocentric understanding of bodies, but also about developing imaginaries that might allow us to to relate differently’ p 11.
- phallogocentric: Coined by the French theorist Jacques Derrida to describe a male-centred point of view expressed in and through language. (oxford reference- dictionary of gender studies).The privileging of the masculine (the phallus) in understanding meaning or social relations.
- Co-worlding is always a collaborative process. 
- process philosophy= a process in working towards making something new, there’s an emergence. emergence is also agency. 

-What are the collaborative processes in my work? how does it work? who and what is it? 

- Is bodies of water a useful framework to discuss/define/think public space or space (in your work, research or artworks that you find interesting). if so how? 
        - underwater bodies - grenadian artist Jason deCaires Taylor
        - that artist from Brittany who collects sea-related objects, plants, stuff and makes installations Laurence Nicola
        - that guy with jacquard and planktons (?) Jeremy Gobe https://www.jeremygobe.info/work/corail-artefact-coalition

My practice = space building and narrative. the meeting place between stories is my framework. (thanks @Belén) 

- Political vs apolitical (ignorance as a choice, is it apolitical? ) 
- it constructs/asks the questions to have a common ground to see as may perspectives as possible/to see the bigger picture, in order to have the discussions to define public space and space. 

CONTEXTUALISATION- Lecture 3

More than Human / Staying with the trouble
  • -Other forms of being, not only human, are also active in an environment or ecology or society, even if
  • they are not living in the biological sense .

  • -Institutes, practices, knowledge are established at every age, it is these links between bodies,
  • institutions,etc.. That power relationship are structured from above. 

  • -Must all relations begin and end w humans? 

  • -STAY WITH THE TROUBLE also from nonhuman perspective. think/respond to the world collectively.
  • This kind of framework, as a way of staying with the trouble, is more effective to imagine a future. A
  • Chtlucene is comprised of ongoing multispecies stories.

  • -we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become
  • each other or not at all. That kind of material semiotics is always situated, someplace and not noplace,
  • entangled and worldly. 

full transcript of notes here

CONTEXTUALISATION 1-
Bibliography/References

-The Open University (2011). Situated Knowledges - Critical Social Psychology (5/30). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bviRiZRzwV4.  

-Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, Vol.14(3), pp 575-599.

-Puleo, H.A. (2017) ‘What is ecofeminism?’, Quaderns de la Mediterrània, Vol.25(1), pp 27-34.

-Neimanis, A. (2017) Bodies of water : posthuman feminist phenomenology. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic.  

-Mies, M. and Shiva, V. (2014) Ecofeminism. 2nd edn. London: Zed Books.  

-Tsing, A. (2020) ‘When the Things We Study Respond to Each Other Tools for Unpacking ‘the Material’’, in Jaque,A. Otero Verzier,M. Pietroiusti, L. (eds). More-than-human. 1st ed. Rotterdam: et Nieuwe Instituut, pp. 16-26.  

-Le Guin, U. (1986) ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, in Le Guin, U. Dancing at the Edge of the World’. New York: Grove Press.  

-Bastide, L. Planete Bleu Podcast, Radio France (2023) L’ecofeminisme peut-il sauver la planete?. Available at: https://www.radiofrance.fr/francebleu/podcasts/planete-bleu-le-mag-planete-bleu-s-engage/l-ecofeminisme-peut-il-sauver-la-planete-1367972

-Bahaffou, M.  (2022) Des paillettes sur le compost, Ecofeminismes au quotidien.  1st edn. Paris: le passager clandestin.

- Le Feminisme ou la mort, Francoise D’Eaubonne.

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