lightsinthedistance-modernlife

In Bourges .  Ghost Nature  is a group exhibition based around the strangeness of the natural world. As contemporary philosopher, Timothy Morton posits in his book,  The Ecological Thought  (Harvard University Press, 2010) ‘nature qua nature’ no longer exists as an “over there” place. Humankind is wholly integrated within its “mesh” and as such, the Romantic desire to commune with a landscape beyond the scope of humanity is impossible. Nevertheless there remains an inherited desire to so. It is a glitch. The tickle of a phantom limb. A desire forever unfulfilled but nonetheless maddening. Artists Sebastian Alvarez, Irina Botea, Marcus Coates, Every House Has A Door, Milan Metthey, Rebecca Mir, Katie Patterson, Tessa Siddle, Agnes Meyer-Brandis and collaborative duo, AOo will install, perform and screen works that explore the dynamic between human and non-human spheres. As with Katie Patterson’s Earth-Moon-Earth or Rebecca Mir’s Long Distance Relationship with the Oce...

This was our presentation to the Cultures of Energy seminar at Rice today. Joe Campana, me, Aynne Kokas, Derek Woods.  Joe and me: beauty and ugliness: oil pipes (beauty of landscape is about hiding them!) versus wind farms (that farmers don’t want messing up their horizon) relationship between beauty and energy me; different scales and spatiotemporal rhythms required: Marina Zurkow--just taking that simple hydrocarbon ad and multiplying it nature coloring books: use of kitsch concept of MESOCOSM And an engagement with things that are considered somewhat marginal to or provocatively on the side of the aesthetic: food; the Klingberg mandala -- disturbing but not in the usual ways; products, shopping looking at issues of consumption and taste consumerism possibility space Joe: it’s a nice segue from the previous Catastrophe cluster presentation. The group formed as a way of thinking about how artists think about energy in a variety of media. Before I even knew I had an interest in t...