Matterlurgy, Helena Hunter & Mark Peter Wright, have been selected by the Royal Holloway’s Centre for the GeoHumanities‘ creative commissions to develop a new work on the theme of creating earth futures.
Matterlurgy: Begin with Noticing
‘This project aims for an arts of attunement within the context of global environmental change (GEC) and the comissioning theme of Creating Earth Futures. The project will begin with a broad emphasis on noticing (Tsing, 2015). Such an inquiry finds its roots through interleaved theories of listening (Dyson, 2014; Lipari, 2009; Voegelin, 2010) and the practices of performance and fictioning. It considers the vibratory, affective and speculative forms of agency bound within the technologies and practices produced by GEC.
The project will specifically engage with issues of sensing and signalling derived from both machinic forms of witnessing (seismograph, geiger counter) to more ancient, terra-technological methods of communication and place-making (smoke signals, songlines). Non-human alarm calls and building tactics (birds, spiders, plant life) will also be explored as alternative catalysts for how art might relate to, and affirmatively contribute new creative signals amongst the saturated noise of GEC data.
Investigating such apparatus and methods of transmission the project will experiment with interdisciplinary research and artistic forms across sound/radio arts, performance, fictioning and sculptural assemblage. The project seeks to produce a series of artworks that challenge and re-imagine how GEC is both sensed and non sensed, signalled and signed, heard and unheard.’
As the project develops the Centre for the GeoHumanities will be sharing updates on their blog and on Twitter @RHGeoHumanities.
Creating Earth Futures Commissions
‘Global environmental change is widely understood to be a ‘wicked’ problem that requires interdisciplinary solutions. Whilst increasing attention is given to the role of social sciences within global environmental change scholarship, less attention has been paid to the possibilities of arts and humanities. These commissions are aimed at building capacity in this field by funding collaborations between creative practitioners and scholars interested in global environmental change.’
Five works were selected for the 2018 programme:
- Mapping the Sound: charting deep time through new lenses by Anne Bevan and Dr Carina Fearnley
- In The Future Perfect by Jol Thomson and Julian Weaver
- Imaginary Explosions by Dr. Karen Holmberg, and Caitlin Berrigan
- Harena by Dr Julian Brigstocke and Victoria J. E. Jones
- Begin with Noticing by Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter & Mark Peter Wright)
Full details about all of the selected works are available on Centre for the GeoHumanities’ blog.
Image: This Debris Tells a Story, The Showroom, 2017. Photo: Nat Urazmetova.