LIVELY MATTER: AN OVERVIEW
‘Weird loops are systems that wrap back on themselves, where all parts are interrelated and embedded in an emergent whole’
- excerpt from 'Weird' by Jonathon Turnbull (2021)
- excerpt from 'Weird' by Jonathon Turnbull (2021)
Lively Matter is a 29-minute moving image that documents the loop of construction, deconstruction and adaptation of 120 assemblages composed of everyday objects and materials across 24 cycles. The crude evolution of each object’s assembly is accompanied by an assortment of over 160 sounds foraged from home. Modelled on the adaptive resilience cycles proposed by ecologist C.S. Holling (1973), this interdisciplinary exploration combines resilience theory with contemporary creative process and is the culmination of Radzevicius’ research contributing towards her Master of Design (Contemporary Art) at the University of South Australia.
Ecological resilience has been described as the ability for a system to adapt and respond to disturbances, such as floods and fires. Gunderson and Holling (2002) indicate that the ability of systems to innovate and capitalise on ecological memory are critical in navigating out of the ‘creative destruction’ caused by natural disasters. It is this innovation and memory that become fundamental to adaptive resilience cycles.
Given that artists and ecologists have a shared interest in place, space, organisms/people, time, energy, matter/objects, it is compelling to consider a contemporary artistic praxis based on the earth’s cyclical processes. This concept also contributes towards the growing discourse to abolish philosophical and theoretical boundaries between nature and culture, argued by John Dewey, Bruno Latour and Felix Guattari. The term Lively Matter was adapted from Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), a text which suggests an innate power of objects, possessing their own 'vital materiality’.
This process offers a new model for contemporary artistic practice in the context of place, environment, belonging and adaption. It also serves as a real-time model of an ecological process while elevating the messy, complicated and beautiful connections between nature and culture. The resulting film reflects the power of novelty, innovation and memory to evoke resilience during a period of unprecedented disturbance and instability.
Click here to learn more about my research.
Ecological resilience has been described as the ability for a system to adapt and respond to disturbances, such as floods and fires. Gunderson and Holling (2002) indicate that the ability of systems to innovate and capitalise on ecological memory are critical in navigating out of the ‘creative destruction’ caused by natural disasters. It is this innovation and memory that become fundamental to adaptive resilience cycles.
Given that artists and ecologists have a shared interest in place, space, organisms/people, time, energy, matter/objects, it is compelling to consider a contemporary artistic praxis based on the earth’s cyclical processes. This concept also contributes towards the growing discourse to abolish philosophical and theoretical boundaries between nature and culture, argued by John Dewey, Bruno Latour and Felix Guattari. The term Lively Matter was adapted from Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), a text which suggests an innate power of objects, possessing their own 'vital materiality’.
This process offers a new model for contemporary artistic practice in the context of place, environment, belonging and adaption. It also serves as a real-time model of an ecological process while elevating the messy, complicated and beautiful connections between nature and culture. The resulting film reflects the power of novelty, innovation and memory to evoke resilience during a period of unprecedented disturbance and instability.
Click here to learn more about my research.
References
- Bennett, J 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press, Durham.
- Dewey, J 1934. Art as Experience, Penguin Publishing Group, New York.
- Guattari, F 2000. The Three Ecologies, The Athlone Press, London.
- Gunderson, LH & Holling, CS, eds. 2002. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature, Island Press, Washington D.C..
- Holling, CS 1973. 'Resilience and stability of ecological systems', Annual review of ecology and systematics, 4, pp.1-23.
- Latour, B 1993. We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
- Turnbull, J 2021. 'Weird', Environmental Humanities, vol. 13, issue 1, pp. 275-280.
Produced with profound gratitude and thanks to Peter Walker, Michael Kutschbach, Anna Brown, J & S Radzevicius and Tom Radzevicius.