| Description |
A Balmy Elsewhere is a body of work which came about through integrating scholarship from new materialism into my ceramic and intermedia art practice. I used a theoretical framework granting agency to non-human objects as a scaffold informing the physical creation of the work and the discussion of it which comprises this paper. I introduce the context of the "material turn" occurring across disciplines alongside the emergence of new materialism from poststructuralist and post humanist thought. This realm of theory critiques traditional Western subject-object relationships and opens the door to non-hierarchical relationships with matter. I argue how contemporary ceramic objects, on their own and in combination with performance art and new media benefit from a new materialist analysis. The recognition of the vast implications uncovered while fully embracing the pull and agency of material demands the creation of strategies to understand this new, dynamic, porous relationship with these objects. I frame the activation of material during performance art as a research method, and humility and perversity as effective postures to approach the implications of the topic. Throughout this process, I discover nuances, flaws, and contradictions of new materialism, especially in its conceptual overlap with indigenous ways of knowing. I steer towards a recapitulation of the branch of study as "restorative materialism," serving as a tool to heal the fissure between ourselves and tactility, immediacy, and empathy, which was created by the informational milieu and slip from meaningful symbolic exchange of our moment. |
