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

这个项目考察了在当代艺术中使用生物材料如何产生对身体、人格和物种间关系的漏洞百出的理解。因此，它将分析过去十年产生的最重要的艺术趋势之一，并将其与背景联系起来。我的分析集中在艺术家的实践中，他们的实践中融入了活性化学和有机物质--从内分泌干扰物到细菌、真菌和霉菌--将他们的作品与生态危机联系在一起。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、作用或因果关系的解释框架；呈现出与身体本身不稳定的边界令人信服的平行关系。我对这些艺术家的作品中物质与意义之间的关系提供了一种创新的解读，我认为他们对颠覆以人类为中心的等级制度的身体进行了“漏洞百出”的描述。我研究了一群艺术家，其中包括Anicka Yi，Jenna Sutela，Candice Lin，Mary Maggic，他们的作品植根于一种生态情感和扩展的主体性概念。值得注意的是，在这些艺术家的作品中，人体很少被表现出来。相反，它是通过躯体过程来调用的，这些过程引起了人们对身体边界的渗透性和可塑性的关注。这种对人类形象的持续拒绝颠覆了形象化的分类冲动，表明身体并不是以人类为中心的同义词。此外，在强调感官而不是观众的时候，这些艺术品鼓励了一种本能的反应，这种反应破坏了心灵/身体的二元论。将这种形象化的变化状态与生态危机联系起来，这个项目考察了身体在认知破裂的这一点上是如何经历的。该项目促进了一项紧迫的研究议程，重点是视觉艺术在应对生态危机中的作用。这一领域的现有文献在很大程度上忽略了艺术品的物质性如何塑造其情感潜力。我通过询问材料和材料实践如何牵涉到这一过程来解决这个疏忽。在这种情况下，我使用的“物质”一词暗示了它在口头上的用法，表示某种具有重要意义的东西。因此，人体的“重要性”直接影响到物种间的关系。就其核心而言，我的研究试图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“衍生式”的方法，即在通过彼此阅读材料和意义的过程中，质疑基于单个机构的解释框架，并将知识定位为一个正在进行的创造世界的过程。我主张将艺术实践作为一种内在的分析模式，它不是简单的说明性的，而是潜在地产生生态意识。

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.