Monday, December 9, 10:00am – 1:30pm, Owen Hall 203 and via Zoom
Briar Coleman
Dr. Jackson Martin, Dr. Brent Skidmore, Art
Humans on this planet are facing profound and interconnected social and ecological crises. These problems in part stem from and are perpetuated by hierarchical ideologies that define Human and Nature as specific and separate entities. Ultimately, these ideologies are ways of seeing the world that can be changed. Two important potential ways that a change of perspective can occur are the powerful emotions associated with grief and rage. Both of these sets of affects are altered states that can queer one’s phenomenological experiences and lead to a shift in priorities, values, and actions. The Greek roots of the word ecology are oikos and logos, often translated as the study of the house. In this body of multidisciplinary artwork, harmful and often unexamined ideologies about the world are explored through the extended metaphor of the House–or the Oikos. The Oikos signifies the interconnected system of hierarchical ideologies such as colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and conceptions of a reified Nature that have led to the catastrophic levels of destruction experienced throughout the world today. Using the suppressed affects of grief and rage, this art-based body of research attempts to queer the quotidian setting of the modern house, framing it as a space that physically embodies and perpetuates these ideologies by normalizing and invisibilizing the violence that is required for modern living. An iterative process of pattern recognition, theoretical and art-historical research, embodiment, diffraction, making, and responding was used. The second half of the title, Umbra, is the darkest part of a shadow. Oikos Umbra shows the shadow side of the houses frequented everyday, the often unexamined ideologies surrounding what it means to be a human in this world. Moreover, it illustrates the underutilized power of eco-social grief and rage as perception-shifting, and thus world-changing, processes.