ART&RESEARCH

This paper was delivered at the Art & Research Conference at the Icelandic Art Academy in October 2008 as an example of a practice-based PhD in Fine Art. The paper is in fact the introduction to my thesis, which is part of my research project at Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at the University of Gothenburg. The research has been supervised by Dr. Katy Deepwell at the London University of the Arts and could be said to push the boundaries of both British and Swedish research guidelines. Writing is not an obligatory component of a practice-based PhD in Gothenburg but I have chosen to produce a critical and reflective account of the processes involved in the preparation and production of the work, situating it as an exploration of the subject. In deviance to UK regulation, I have not sought to answer my research questions in the thesis itself but directed the writing so these may be found in the artwork. The resultant thesis explores the research involved in three art projects that form the basis of my PhD enquiry, which began with exploring ideas of ‘wilderness’ in human relationships with animals. Through the process of the PhD it has changed focus to become an examination of the relationship between the different modes of representation of animals with a particular emphasis on lens-based media.

The process of this research has lasted just over four years giving me opportunities to concentrate on the practice at the same time as I have engaged with literature from a range of disciplines connecting to animal studies. It has created a space for me to reflect in detail on my practice and to articulate the processes involved in making the work and to consider its relationship to the work of other artists and related practices, as well as furthering my conceptual enquiry. When applying to do my PhD at Gothenburg University, one of the main attractions was what I saw as a commitment to artistic ‘practice’ as ‘serious’ research, on a par with other academic disciplines. Although the road travelled has not always been smooth I still believe this commitment holds, along with a genuine curiosity about the relationship between artistic processes and the production of knowledge.

From the beginning of my assignment it was clear to me that the production of artwork would be at the centre of my academic research and the writing would act as an interlocutor to the artistic practice both reflectively and as a means by which the work itself would be informed. As evidence of that I consider the fact that through the process of doing this degree, my confidence in and command of visual language as an investigative research tool, has been reinforced. This is not about my own tenacity but it has been about my study of what have become the ‘subjects’ of my enquiry – the non-human-animals. Through studying non-human-animals I have come to recognize the shortcomings in human systems of communication and attendant power structures. Saying that, it is important to make clear that I consider the writing of this text for the PhD degree a fundamental tool in its delivery. I have found the demands of articulating my thoughts, my actions, my processes and influences in writing, an immersive process, which has challenged my thinking and helped to focus the artistic enquiry.

In this research, I have been guided by a number of thinkers, who have contributed to an academic discourse on the representation of animals in contemporary Western culture. A particular emphasis in my reflections within this thesis has been given to what constitutes what I refer to as the ‘eclipse’ of the animal. Spaces of ‘disappearance’ in human/animal relations have been utilized to enter, by means of visual art, into the logic of these arguments around the ‘eclipse’ in the encounter with animals. The strategies applied in the practice use concepts such as absence/presence in the context of contemporary culture and animal discourse. Exhibiting these works in a number of different public spaces and contexts has enabled the practical application of these concepts allowing me to observe and explore consequent multiple readings. The artworks aim to engage their audiences in a series of ‘encounters’ with the subject through simultaneous ‘meetings’ of dualities/opposites, eg.: haunting vs. hunting, perfection vs. imperfection and the ‘real’ vs. the ‘unreal’ and are important in theorizing this relational space and in formulating questions embedded in and arising from the artworks on the construction and the limits of the ‘boundaries’ between them. The challenge in our art projects is to explore such boundaries in an attempt to ‘think with’ or to constructively ‘activate’ the spaces of encounter between human animals and non-human animals.¹

The idea of the eclipse of the animal is related to the theories of John Berger about the overall disappearance of animals and how these are reflected in the décor of displays in zoos as well as in animal toys and commercial imagery in contemporary culture.² It is also connected to the theories of Akira Lippit, who used Berger’s theories to propose that modernity enabled animals to exist in human discourse only in a continuous state of disappearance, or “perpetual vanishing”.³

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an eclipse as “an obscuring of the light from one celestial body by the passage of another between it and the observer or between it and its source of illumination”.⁴ As the work in this research employs lens-based media, a word that describes disappearance through the mediation of light is appropriate. A further reference is Jules Janssen (1824-1907) and his research into solar eclipses and the luminous spectra that occurs which led to the invention of what has been called the “photographic revolver”. The opening and the closing of light to imprint a substance onto a surface, was thus an instigator in capturing the movement of light through all the different stages of the solar eclipse. Such was the faith in this newly invented tool that Jansen is supposed to have referred to the photographic plate as “retina of the scientists”.⁵

The photograph works with the skin or the surface of the body in a similar way to taxidermy. When we (human animals) look at non-human animals, it is the surface of their body – the exterior form – that is registered.⁶ When thinking about the inside of the non-human animal, it is seen as a carcass, often as meat for consumption whereas human animals are seen as having ‘a soul’ and an imagined interiority. One of the philosophical reasons given for animals existing in a continuous state of disappearance is connected to the fact that they are not thought to have a soul and are therefore denied any spiritual experience or empathy from humans of suffering in death. In Donna Haraway I find affirmation to continue: “staying with the complexities does not mean not acting, not doing research, not engaging in some, indeed many, unequal instrumental relationships; it does mean learning to live and think in practical opening of shared pain and mortality and learning what that living and thinking teach”.⁷ There is invariably an intention and indeed an expectation that the processes of art-making allow insights in these respects, informing and influencing the direction and substance of the work. These processes necessarily constitute not just a one-way street between artists and public, but also create a forum for these questions and discourses. The exhibited work is thus simultaneously a document and a catalyst. In the art collaboration, (I work collaboratively with the artist Mark Wilson) our artistic work develops through a process of dialogue and the application of a variety of technical and conceptual skills. These are interwoven into the fabric of the work, which accommodates a wide range of readings. Although the artwork for this PhD research is part of the collaborative art practice, the focus of the PhD enquiry and the subsequent writing of this thesis is my sole responsibility.

Art Projects.
The three art projects that form this academic enquiry are entitled nanoq: flat out and bluesome;(a)fly; and seal.

[Fig. 1 nanoq:flat out and bluesome, installation Spike Island, Bristol, 2004.]

nanoq: flat out and bluesome is a visual art project that explores the meaning embedded in taxidermic polar bears and what they symbolize in the contemporary western world. The project explores the cultural constitution of nature. Through this work, the polar bear, as a ‘hollow’ animal body, has been examined in the context of a historical relationship between taxidermy and photography; an oscillation between life and death and the camera’s capacity to transform and implant memory and construct identity.

The project, which was developed through our survey of taxidermic polar bears in the UK, raises an array of questions and issues. It sets out to unearth a series of narratives, anecdotes and fragments arising directly from the provenances of individual bears and to connect the audience to a new knowledge that the specimen could be seen to embody. The project also aims to provide insight into a rich and celebrated epoch of exploration, learning and discovery that a ‘confrontation’ with these specimens might unlock. Begun in 2001, the project took five years to complete and was structured around three anticipated outcomes and related processes. These were:

[Fig. 2 nanoq, photographic installation (detail) Scot Polar Research Institute, 2008.]

 

[Fig. 3 (a)fly, process image for survey, National Museum Iceland, 2006.]

(a)fly is a visual art project that investigates preconceptions about nature, culture, domesticity and the wild by exploring our relationship to the non-human animals we invite to live with us – referred to as pets. The project, which was centred on a defined geographical area within the city of Reykjavík, explored the meeting point and the overlapping of territories between non-human animals and human animals. It investigated established hierarchies of classification in relation to non-human animals and proposed to draw the viewer into the non-human animal body in a momentary attempt at ‘becoming animal’. The project operated in three different sites with generally separate constituencies of participants.

[Fig. 4 (a)fly – Mosi, photographic installation (detail), Reykjavík City Library, 2006.]

These three different sites were: