Porous Bodies: Ecology and the Dynamics of Mattering in Contemporary Art.

该项目探讨了当代艺术中生物材料的使用如何产生对身体、人格和物种间关系的多孔理解。因此，它将分析并将过去十年中产生的最重要的艺术趋势之一置于背景中。我的分析集中在那些将活性化学物质和有机物质（从内分泌干扰物到细菌、真菌和霉菌）结合在一起的艺术家身上，他们的作品与生态危机有关。受制于不可预测的生物过程，这些艺术品从根本上挑战了基于个人意图、代理或因果关系的解释框架；呈现出与身体本身不稳定边界的令人信服的平行。我对这些艺术家作品中物质与意义之间的关系提出了一种创新的解读，我认为他们对身体进行了“多孔”的描述，颠覆了以人类为中心的等级制度。我研究了一群艺术家，其中包括Anicka Yi， Jenna Sutela， Candice Lin和Mary magic，他们的作品植根于生态敏感性和主体性的扩展概念。值得注意的是，人体很少在这些艺术家的作品中出现。相反，它是通过躯体过程调用的，这引起了人们对身体边界的渗透性和延展性的注意。这种对人类形象的持续拒绝颠覆了形象的分类学冲动，表明身体不是人类中心主义的同义词。此外，通过强调感官而非观赏性，这些艺术作品鼓励了一种发自内心的反应，这种反应打破了心灵/身体的二元性。该项目将这种与生态危机相关的形象变化状态置于情境中，探讨了在认知断裂的这一点上，身体是如何被体验的。这个项目有助于一个紧迫的研究议程，重点是视觉艺术在面对生态危机中的作用。这一领域的现存文献在很大程度上忽视了艺术作品的物质性如何塑造其情感潜力。我通过探究物质和物质行为如何牵连到物质的过程来解决这种疏忽。在这种情况下，我使用“matter”这个词是指它的口头用法，表示某种重要的后果。因此，人体的“重要性”直接影响到物种间的关系。在其核心，我的研究旨在更好地理解身体的表征如何干预这种动态。为此，我提倡一种“衍射”的方法，即通过彼此解读事物和意义，质疑基于个人能动性的解释框架，并将知识定位为创造世界的持续过程。我认为艺术实践是一种内在的分析模式，它不仅仅是说明性的，而且是潜在的生态意识的产物。

This project examines how the use of biological materials in contemporary art produces a porous understanding of the body, personhood, and interspecies relations. As such, it will analyse and contextualise one of the most significant tendencies of art produced over the past decade. My analysis centres on artists whose practices incorporate active chemical and organic substances - ranging from endocrine disrupters to bacteria, fungi, and moulds - situating their work in relation to the ecological crisis. Subject to unpredictable biological processes, these artworks fundamentally challenge interpretive frameworks based on individual intention, agency, or causality; presenting a compelling parallel with the unstable boundaries of the body itself. Offering an innovative reading of the relationship between matter and meaning in these artists' work, I argue they stage a 'porous' account of the body that subverts anthropocentric hierarchies. I study a group of artists, which includes Anicka Yi, Jenna Sutela, Candice Lin, and Mary Maggic, whose work is rooted in an ecological sensibility and an expanded conception of subjectivity. Notably, the human body is rarely represented in these artists' work. Rather, it is invoked through somatic processes that draw attention to the permeability and malleability of bodily frontiers. This persistent refusal to image the human form subverts the taxonomic impulses of figuration, demonstrating that the bodily is not synonymous with the anthropocentric. Further, in emphasising the sensorial over the spectatorial, these artworks encourage a visceral response that de-stabilises mind / body dualisms. Situating this changing status of figuration in relation to the ecological crisis, this project examines how the body is experienced at this point of epistemic rupture. This project contributes to an urgent research agenda focused on the role of the visual arts in confronting the ecological crisis. Extant literature in this field has largely overlooked how the materiality of the work of art shapes its affective potential. I address this oversight, by asking how materials and material praxes are implicated in the process of mattering. My use of the term 'matter' in this instance alludes to its verbal usage, denoting something of consequential importance. How the human body 'matters' therefore has a direct impact on interspecies relations. At its core, my research seeks to better understand how representations of the body intervene in this dynamic. To this end, I advocate a 'diffractive' approach that, in reading matter and meaning through one another, questions interpretive frameworks based on individual agency and positions knowledge as an ongoing process of world-making. I argue for artistic practice as an immanent mode of analysis, which is not simply illustrative, but potentially productive of ecological consciousness.