GEOART AS A NEW MATERIALIST PRACTICE. INTRA-ACTIVE BECOMINGS AND ARTISTIC (KNOWLEDGE) PRODUCTION.
(2018)
author(s): Dorota Golanska
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Situated within a new materialist philosophical framework and inspired by its posthumanistic, postdualistic, and affirmative orientation, this article looks at instances of geoart, understanding it in terms of intra-active knowledge production processes. I look specifically at the artistic projects by Jim Denevan and, by doing so, I intend to examine the concept of a non-academic artistic practice with an aim of exposing that a detailed inspection of the processes involved in the artistic production sheds an altogether different light on the nature of all research practices. As such, it lets us engage more thoroughly with the “how-question” of generating knowledge, highlighting its processual material-semiotic character. As instantiated in my case studies, an inquiry of different relationalities involved in the process of artistic (knowledge) production enables a study of how subject and object emerge as a result of “intra-activity” (Barad 2007).
Using his own body as both a tool and an active corporeal entity merging with the surrounding landscape, a geoartist Jim Denevan rhythmically and in a dance-like movement creates ephemeral gigantic drawings on sand, soil, or ice. They emerge out of a dynamic assemblage of the artist’s body (and his tools) and the local geophysical situation (with different sorts of matter or forces present there). The natural environment operates as an agent actively engaged in the whole process of artistic creation—of both making and unmaking of the drawings. When finished by Denevan, his works of art remain dynamic; they are being gradually modified and eventually erased by the undulating waves, tides, gusts of wind, the working of erosion and weathering, until they completely disappear. Focusing on the engagement of the artist with the environment and the random audiences present on site, I want to make clear that such eco-sensitive creation may serve as an illuminating example of what forms the entanglements of art and research could take and what material-semiotic effects such creative activities produce for all actors involved.
Desperfilar as artes visuais, o objeto enlouquecedor e o movimento das coisas
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Orlando Vieira Francisco, FELIPE Argiles, Ana Sofia Ribeiro
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
Exposition of the seminar "Deperfilar as artes visuais, o objeto enfrenquedor e o movimento das coisas" (Unprofiling Visual Arts, the Disturbing Object, and the Movement of Things) and publication of the same name for the series Desajustados - Coleção de Textos Falados (i2ADS). The event was organized within the “Arquipélago” program promoted by ID_CAI - IDENTIDADES_Coletivo de Ação/Pesquisa (i2ADS) in October 2024.
The results presented arise within the scope of visual and performing arts by approaching a transdisciplinary analysis of the historical, epistemological, and categorical profile in which the subject and nature are perceived, the territory is thought, and science merges.
The event and its derived publications are part of the research project program “From the top of the mountains we can see invisible monuments: transnational artistic investigation on landscape environmental changes caused by infrastructure space” (i2ADS).