Skip to content
Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00733
- Thesis Title
- Humans Inside Nature:Shared Agency in Multi-species Art
- Author
- Kassandra bossell
- E-mail
- kassandra.bossell AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- MFA (Research)
- Year
- 2018
- Number of Pages
- 158
- University
- UNSW
- Thesis Supervisor
- Lindsay Kelly
- Supervisor e-mail
- l.kelley AT unsw.edu.au
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Louise Fowler-Smith, Allan Giddy
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English (Aus)
- Department / Discipline
- Fine Arts
- Copyright Ownership
- Languages Familiar to Author
- URL where full thesis can be found
- www.unsworks.unsw.edu.au/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=unsworks_54765&context=L&vid=UNSWORKS&search_scope=unsworks_search_scope&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US
- Keywords
- Art, Sculpture, Installation, Public Art, Co-agency, multi-species, Anthropocene, interdependent, interconnected
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- This paper traces a visual and conceptual expedition, moving from a science-based anthropocentric perspective to a shared multi-species viewpoint inside nature. I use materiality and scale in sculpture and installation to entice the art viewer inside biological organisms. I argue that agency derives from multi-species interdependence and is therefore more than human. The relationality of humans inside nature is the focus of this study. Through my artworks, I investigate the interdependence of living organisms and this serves as an impetus to shift from the anthropocentric gaze to a consideration of the life worlds of non-humans. I provoke the imagination of belonging within a complex network of life forms by manipulating the corporeal associations of three-dimensional practice. The capability of sculpture to produce poetic metaphor brings into play many different interpretations, meanings and values: I use this polyvalent application to open an explorative space for the viewer. I attend to the requirements of content, audience and site by creating installations, public art and object-based sculpture.In support of my sculptural practice, I build on current posthumanist discourse about the Anthropocene to combine concepts from philosophy, science and art. I demonstrate these transdisciplinary links by interweaving specific theories from deep ecology, speculative realism and current ecological theories on connectivity.Comprised of five bodies of work, this research tracks a purposeful shift away from Anthropocentrism. These artworks generate space for mutually beneficial perspectives by enticing a practice of care into the positions on co-evolving organisms and the matter that is in constant co-becoming with ‘us’. In consequence, my research creates a decentralized and reconnected potential for the human outlook on and interaction within,the natural environment.