Out with the Anthropocene: Art for an Animate Earth

Ensnared in but fed up with the inanity of late capitalism and environmental ruin, this thesis examines the ways in which contemporary artists are working against the grain of the dominant anthropocentric Western culture to seek new pathways out of the so-called Anthropocene. The artists under discussion, Carolina Caycedo, Krista Caballero and Frank Ekeberg, and Natalie Jeremijenko, create participatory projects that simultaneously critique the entanglement of human practices and loss of species and encourage their audiences (and the larger global public) to formulate new relationships with our fellow Earthly critters and our damaged ecosystems. This research takes a leaf from new materialist methodologies and the work of scholars such as Donna Haraway and T. J. Demos to consider how artists have deviated from the accustomed Western humanist notion of the individual as separate from nature to instead become recognizant of our critical role as one animal among many imbricated in a remarkably complex but endangered system of exchange. With its implications of collectivity and becoming-with each other, audience participatory art lends itself well to this thinking. The three case studies therefore work through the advantages and potential limitations of art serving as a medium for small-scale social change at a moment when larger global movements toward ecological sustainability are absent. The discussed participatory projects make apparent that there does exist an elasticity to human thought that can open potential futures in which the human species is less toxic and more responsive to the multifarious animacies that mill about this imperiled planet.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Kaufman, Tara

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alvarez, Mariola V.

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Glahn, Philip

• Art history
• Environmental studies
• Climate change
• Contemporary
• Eco-art
• Environmental art
• Loss of species
• Participatory art

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/3092

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/3092