Imagining Our Way To Others
I have a feeling I’m not alone. I look at the works around me, but I feel they see me too and observe my movements. Some of them even have eyes, I’m a target of their gaze just as much as they are mine. Can the artist’s materials become alive in the works, can they approach and touch us, exist like we exist? The human being is an inquisitive animal, naturally attuned to others. But who are others? Other humans, certainly, and non-human animals as well. But what about inanimate creatures or objects, do they count? In the reality of art, all matter can be alive and meaningful, all creatures, from the smallest bird to everyday objects to human beings, are equally important when set in the context of creative imagination.
Substances and creatures are commonly divided into categories according to their properties, creating seemingly natural boundaries between the inanimate and the animate, between you and me, between us and other animals. Such divisions help us understand the world – and, at best, to better take relate to the needs and interests of others. For the most part, however, we neglect to do so and cause instead widespread and varied ecological imbalances through our actions. The decline and destruction of the diversity of life also affects us, we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of creation or protect ourselves from environmental impacts. Ismo Kajander’s surreal horned figure shedding blood-red tears builds its body from items discarded by sea creatures and humans. It refuses to fit into any of the common categories of being, quite the contrary: it challenges the imposition of such categories of meaning. The Scream / Horror before life’s end (2011) measures time, staring at us without flinching, demanding that we meet its gaze and do something. And indeed, we are constantly trying to find better solutions, search for new knowledge, learn to slow down or manage changes in our environment, and control our private emotions and social situations caused by those changes. We are trying to make humanity a more harmonious part of the world, to place ourselves on an equal footing with other living beings instead of considering ourselves special and entitled to use everything merely to satisfy our own needs. We want to feel connected to our environment and relate to others, to understand them more deeply. We are frantically searching for a new bond, but the shell of a dead clam already rattles in the broken gaze of the sculpted herald, horrified by visions of things to come.
I approach the works in the gallery and the non-human in them – other beings, environment, materiality – from a posthumanist perspective. Posthumanism is a theoretical approach and an field of interdisciplinary research that dismantles our anthropocentric worldview and thinking. Its many and diverse branches provide a fertile ground for art. Despite their nuances, posthumanist theories usually emphasise the fact that humans are part of their environment. Posthumanism revises the anthropocentric assumptions of humanism and creates alternatives to modes of thinking and action that put humans and individuals in the centre. Applied to art, it can help us find new ways of depicting interdependent forms of life, for example, their connecting features, or the nature of materials and objects that have environmental impacts. There is also posthumanism that focuses on imagining a future age after humans. Some speculations revolve around the idea that technological development will eventually enable humanity to transform into a more advanced, posthuman version of itself. In other speculations, life on Earth continues without us. A third direction concentrates on the disruption of the anthropocentric age and on finding a connection that will sustain the totality of the next biosphere.[1]
Speculative imagining has a long tradition as a creative force and a method of art. We must also remember that relations between humans and non-humans and related ideas have never been immutable, even though posthumanism is today giving us a clearer view of all beings and encourages us to think differently by seeking wisdom from the non-human. Cultural divisions have been constructed and dismantled before, both in science and in art. Art that draws on the posthumanist perspective or requires it as a framework of interpretation, tends to address many of the same themes that artists reflecting upon the environment, their own humanity and their being in the world have always explored. Many of the works in this gallery were in fact created before the advent of posthumanism.
A case in point is Juhani Harri’s assemblages of bee hives and bird eggs, which he created before bird species had become endangered and the numbers of pollinators collapsed. The works are made of found objects and materials, from which the artist has created intense compositions placed in display boxes. The technique was quite exceptional for its day, with Harri using objects to create images much like a painter does with paints in their palette.
Harri’s attitude towards his works is one of eminent materiality: both the method and the works themselves are informed by the diversity and processes of the material world in a way that is aptly described in current scientific discourse on the significance of materials. The creation of an artwork can be seen as a joint endeavour in which both the artist and the materials play a part, and which viewers later join in as well. They are all agents, and their collective thinking and embodied, pre-linguistic affective interactions occur incrementally within momentary experiences. The constituents of the work are thus intertwined, changing and constantly evolving in the fluid situation.[2]
Describing the significance of material in their practice, contemporary artists sometimes refer to neo-materialist theory and talk about material as an agent guiding their creative work. The feel of materials, the sense of being in process with them, and the ultimate coalescence of the materials into a piece of art, these are all organic and everyday matters in an artist’s work. They form the foundation for professional practices, the thinking that goes on in the material and in the hands-on process of creation. Neo-materialism offers a natural framework for conceptualising such a practice that is mostly non-verbal and embodied, reaching beyond linguistic signifiers and characterised by constant changes in process and reconfigurations of matter. Matter to be seen, felt, heard, reached by the senses. From the perspective art making, it seems logical to think that alongside the skill and creativity needed for creative work, the material itself should also possess special significance – that material be described as alive and be seen as having the potential to join the pattern of other matter around it.
Umppa Niinivaara’s raku sculptures radiate a sense of the time spent with the material, listening to clay and responding to its characteristics. The agency of the clay can seen as an integral component of the work and the process of sculpting. However, the impact of non-human agency in the finished piece is not free or random, the work reflects the artist’s intimate knowledge of the material and its agency, her ability to bring the clay to its desired shape through the myriad choices of her hands.
Works of art are matter that has accumulated and become organised during the artist’s creative process. They are traces of a conversation between the artist and the material, compositions created together. Whatever the process, they are nevertheless unique material and aesthetic assemblages. There are many ways in which artists articulate their process – or leave it unarticulated – through their personal artistic thinking. They have a special dispensation to interpret the world as they like: to play and imagine, to shape the material in the direction they want. To build new horizons, to show us ways to possible worlds. To tell us something essential about ourselves and others, about the world we live in, together, right now. Niinivaara’s title Anemoniamania 31, 37, 48 (2022) for her works is a reference to the underwater world and its inhabitants. The organically round creatures have settled into restful positions. Their strength lies in their solid sculpturality and presence, which leaves room for the viewer’s imagination.
The aims of art are intrinsically open, and artworks allow the audience to arrive at different interpretations. Visual art tends to avoid words and the precise conceptual definitions formed by language. It is inherently different, a mode of being in the world that is based on colours, shapes and feel. To experience or make art you do not need theories. However, posthumanism allows us to explore the meanings of sensation, communication and interaction in a way that is free from anthropocentrism. It is eminently suited to attune us to appreciate and encounter works of art that depict non-human beings or things – to depose the human being as experiencing subject and dislocate conventional ideas by offering new perspectives. Instead of exploiting the things around us, how can we care for them? To remedy, when necessary, our harmful behaviour and redirect it towards valuing and nurturing others, even when those others remain distant and alien to us? Or to allow ourselves to be nurtured and touched, to receive and to listen to others, instead of focusing our attention on how we ourselves affect our environment?
I keep returning to eyes, to looking and being looked at. To the power of the gaze. In art, the creator’s and the viewer’s gaze can be based on understanding and compassion, yet it can also stimulate critical thinking. Many of these works have eyes that resemble our own. They look back instead of being merely an object of the gaze, an object of art. The eye is said to be the mirror of the soul, and that familiar thought hints at the idea that a work can have a soul or mind. That they are more than objects. Maija Albrecht’s flowers observe me from the pages of an artist’s book that is folded into an accordion. The plants don’t always appear whole, yet even the smallest hints of them emerge delicate yet strong from the difficult paper. The centres of the flowers are tiny eyes. Perhaps they see differently from us, for the essence of flowers and their way of being are so different from those of us humans. Yet flowers react to events and to each other, and on order to exist they draw sustenance from the soil, just like us.
We have studied plants for a long time, and even in art they possess a rich symbolic and aesthetic tradition, yet as living creatures they remain in many ways alien to us. How a Flower Is (2010) subtly suggests that we turn our attention to the reality and way of being of plants. Natania Meeker and Antonia Szqbari suspect that plants will become “new animals”, others whose value and nature people will debate in relation to themselves. The needs and mutual communication of rooted, non-ambulatory plants, their silent movement and life that persistently penetrates other structures, are relatively easy to ignore or eradicate. According to Emanuele Coccia, animal chauvinism prevents us from transcending the language of animals. It makes it difficult for humans, and perhaps other animals as well, to understand the truth of plants. If we nevertheless are able to reach out to beings so different from us as plants, we may well learn to appreciate better all other things as well.
Discussions about plants and non-human animals tend to address them as parallel categories or contrast them against each other by emphasising their differences. In the posthumanist view, however, both are part of a diverse group of non-human beings whose essence and ways of being are different from our own. In comparison with plants, non-human animals have a lot more in common with us: they have similar body parts and features, they feel and sense the world as we do, they think and learn, they care for their young and live in communities just like we do. Non-human animals resemble us, and when we encounter them we tend to turn our gaze onto our own animal nature. In Rita Anttila’s photograph, Cygnus musicus (2011) hides against a wall in dim light. The creature that once was alive is now silent and still, the curve its neck has turned into a sign that signifies something else than the animal. The whooper swan is regarded a bird of fate. Perhaps the animal that has over centuries become part of the symbolic order of many cultures, is here telling us about its own “swan song”, reminding us that we need art even in this day and age to reveal to us knowledge or some experience of the world that would otherwise remain obscured.
Where Anttila’s swan avoids direct eye contact and is lost in the shadows, Albrecht’s birds stare back at us as unflinchingly as people in portraits. It is natural to thing of the birds as individuals, although they do not reveal their personality or life story and retain instead their otherness and mysterious distance from us humans. Birds and other animals and their languages threaten to remain as alien to us as plants. We would be wise to learn to know languages and get better at interspecies dialogue: to listen to other animals from their own perspectives and accept that they too are individuals, just like us, experiencing and behaving in their own lives.[3]
Non-human species are not a coherent group. There is in practice no one formula for approaching non-human beings on their own terms, even if posthumanist epistemology does examine them in terms of common factors such as materiality. All materials exist in relation to each other, they go through similar processes but are affected by them in different ways. Inanimate objects can wear out, plants can wilt and animals break. Experiences of debilitation are different for a sentient and conscious animal, for a plant that has no neural network or mind, or for an inanimate being.
The connection between the artist and her material is based on the artist’s vision and intentions, but it is also guided by the nature of the material. How forceful is its will and agency? What or who is the material? What if the material is primarily an autonomous being who does not fit into the framework of the work the artist is contemplating? How much is it possible, or fair, to involve it – or her – in the artistic process? The distinguishing feature of posthumanist art is the involvement of living non-humans: the active agency of real plants and animals steers the work in directions no longer determined by the artist alone. The use of such living materials challenges our notions of art, its form and authorship. At the same time, it also raises the question whether we are entitled to remove non-human living others from their habitat so as to use them in our works. In this particular space there are no real others, which makes it easier to pass over any ethical considerations of issues concerning other animals, for example, and instead to experience the works themselves as others, as beings to reach out to and whose eyes to look into. After all, living beings are made of the same stuff as inanimate ones. The works, the creatures depicted in them as well as we, the viewers, are all part of the material world.
Relating to other beings embedded in artworks is a process of interaction and being in the world that is accompanied by art. Marsha Mesikimmon describes art as a locus or situation that is formed by and between the experiences of the actors involved. Because the power of affects and imagination arising in art opens up processes and helps us look to the future, it can be employed to respond to questions about worldmaking. Francesca Ferrando, on the other hand, stresses the importance of practice in the construction of posthumanist worlds, arguing that an artist’s most important posthumanist work is ultimately life itself that begets art. It is possible to approach art by looking at the ideas and visions that the artist communicates about her life, the values and perceptions that the works manifest – in a word, the worlds that the artist creates.[4]
All-pervasive interaction and being in the world, genuine care and consideration for others, these call for critical self-reflection: the courage to see ourselves as we are and the ability or willingness to change our actions, to change ourselves. The challenge of posthumanism to humanity – whether in terms of art making, looking or being in the world in general – is that we commit to practising respectful presence and interaction in encounters with others, that we seek balance with abandon and take up less space. That we keep our minds open to the as yet unknown and still emerging new potentiality. I suggest that we approach the works in this gallery by muting our inner voice and focusing instead on what is outside of ourselves. That will make it easier for us to see how our perception of ourselves and of others is changed by a perspective that places the emphasis on non-human reality. What does it feel like? How do we view others and different ways of being? How do we want to be in our lives; what kind of a world do we want to build? How do we care, how are we cared for?
*
Outimaija Hakala is a visual artist and art historian whose interests include animal and environmental issues and the ethics of art. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis on representation and consideration of non-human animals in visual art at the Department of Art at Aalto University.
*
References:
[1] For more on posthumanism, see e.g. Francesca Ferrando (2019), Donna J. Haraway (2016), Karoliina Lummaa & Lea Rojola (2016), Cary Wolfe (2021).
[2] For more on neo-materialism, see e.g. Jane Benett’s Vibrant Matter (2020) or the collection of articles edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (2010).
[3] For example, Emanuele Coccia (2020) has written about plants and Eva Meyer (2019) about non-human animals.
[4] The idea of an artist creating worlds in their works harks back to Nelson Goodman’s theory of people as world-builders.
Sources:
Bennet, Jane. Materiaalin väre. Tampere: niin & näin, 2020 [2004].
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.
Coccia, Emanuele. Kasvien elämä. Sekoittumisen metafysiikkaa. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto, 2020 [2016].
Coccia, Emanuele 2020. Kasvien elämä. Sekoittumisen metafysiikkaa. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto.
Coole, Diana & Frost, Samantha toim. New Materialisms. Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Ferrando, Francesca. Philosophical Posthumanism. London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi & Sidney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Ferrando, Francesca. Luennot. Posthumanism & Worldbuilding Symposium. Foreign Objekt & Posthuman Art Network -yhteisö, 2021.
Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: The Harvester Press, 1978.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying With the Trouble. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
Heino, Timo. ”Menneisyys elää meissä” teoksessa Juhani Harri. Loimaala, Päivi toim. Tampere: Sara Hildénin taidemuseo, 2020.
Lummaa, Karoliina & Rojola, Lea toim. Posthumanismi. Turku: Eetos, 2016.
Meeker, Natania & Szqbari, Antonia. Radical Botany. Plants and Speculative Fiction. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020.
Meijer, Eva. When Animals Speak. Toward an Interspecies Democracy. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Mesikimmon, Marsha. ”From the Cosmos to the Polis: On Denizens, Art and Postmigration Worldmaking”. Schramm, Moritz & Ring Petersen Anne (ed.) (Post)Migration in the Age of Globalisation: New Challenges to imagination and representation: Special Issue of Journal of Aesthetics & Culture. Taylor & Francis Group, Routledge: Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 9. No. 2. 2017.
Wolfe, Cary. Art and Posthumanism. Essays, Encounters, Conversations. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2021.
