Elizabeth Straughan

The Art of Socioecological Transformation

This article uses two artistic case studies, Bird Yarns (a knitting collective engaging questions of climate change) and SLOW Cleanup (an artist-driven environmental remediation project) to examine the “work” art can do with respect to socioecological transformations. We consider these cases in the context of geographys recent interest in “active experimentations and anticipatory interventions” in the face of the challenges posed by the environmental and social uncertainties of the Anthropocene. We propose two dimensions to the force of art with respect to these concerns. First, it provides a site and set of practices from which scientists, artists, and communities can come to recognize as well as transform relations between humans and nonhumans. Second, it encourages an accounting of the constitutive force of matter and things with implications for politics and knowledge production. Through these two dimensions, we explore how the arts can enable forms of socioecological transformation and, further, how things might be different in the future, enabling us to explore who and what might play a part in defining and moving toward such a future.

Wonder-full geomorphology Sublime aesthetics and the place of art

Though not yet readily apparent in articles and book chapters, there is a burgeoning series of ‘in the field’ collaborations between geomorphologists and artists focused around the mutual exploration of ‘inspirational landscapes’, and the harnessing of the emotive dimensions of such body/world encounters in the production and communication of geomorphological knowledge. Seemingly at odds with the discipline’s emphasis upon the production of fieldwork data (as opposed to sensed phenomena), as well as its disavowal of the subjective, this work nevertheless resonates with a complex and fascinating aesthetic tradition within geomorphology. Here, we ‘place’ these contemporary collaborations via: reference to Humboldtian science, and the crucial link between sensibility and precision; a reading of the Kantian sublime in the work of G.K. Gilbert; a sketching out of the evisceration of both the aesthetic and art in the second half of the 20th century; and, finally, a review of the current scope of art/geomorphology collaborations, and possible futures.

The salon as clinic: problematising, treating, and caring for skin

In this paper I draw upon Foucaults concept of the clinic, as well as his later work on the ‘care of the self’, in a consideration of the problems that are diagnosed, and the treatments that take place, within the beauty salon. As biotechnology descends to the sub-molecular level, so those spaces that are linked to the laboratory through the diffusion of knowledges, practices and material products—such as the salon—are also reworked. Traditionally the locus for an array of experts in both body and mind who instruct (mostly) women on how to care for the self, salons use a series of ‘cutting edge’ treatments to pamper and groom the body, correcting as it does so various problem areas such as the skin. I argue, using interview material from salon managers and employees, for the beauty salon as a key site wherein health and medical knowledge is disseminated, and the clinical gaze is brought to bear.

The smell of the Moon

In a darkened room on Earth, an astronaut stands amongst a collection of moon rocks slowly and deliberately performing a maintenance task. With a grab stick in one hand and gas hose in another, he/she deploys the grab stick to pick up moon rocks spraying them, one by one, with the smell of the Moon. Titled Enter at Own Risk, this performance work is the creation of artist duo Hagen Betzwieser and Sue Corke who collaborate as WE COLONISED THE MOON. In this paper I consider the way in which the sense of smell has been deployed as an aesthetic object by this art duo and in so doing, unpack the qualities of smell that have traditionally made this a problematic sense with regards to its deployment within the space of the art gallery. These are spatial and temporal qualities that have been utilized by Betzwieser and Corke not only in the design of the installation space at Liverpool’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology but also through the bringing together of maintenance practice and smell – the durational and the ephemeral – which has implications beyond the gallery space, imbuing the work with its critical edge.

Rhythm and Mobility in the Inner and Outer Hebrides: Archipelago as Art-Science Research Site

Abstract This paper explores some of the dimensions of mobility and rhythm emerging from a voyage to the Inner and Outer Hebrides, island collectives on the North West Coast of Scotland. In the summer of 2011, this voyage, combining boat, water and islands, as well as their inhabitants, became a research site for members of Cape Farewell, an organisation that seeks to produce creative responses to climate change. Crew members specifically sought to consider the impact of climate change on island cultures and ecologies, and the sustainability and preservation initiatives deployed here, as well as broader indicators of climate change in the area. Using participant observation of the voyage and interviews, we examine the bodily experienced, rhythmic aspects of the voyage itself; that is, the aesthetics via which the spaces and places of the Inner and Outer Hebrides became known and felt. We consider especially the rhythms of nature and the sea that encompass the motility of materials that are central to a ‘politics of mobility’ that, for Cape Farewell, characterises these islands as frontiers of climate change.