An Encounter with Lee Ufan’s Installation,
Relatum (formally Iron Field) 1969/2019
Contents
List of Illustrations
Abstract
Context
Posthuman Perspective
Relatum through a posthuman perspective
Posthuman theory through the perspective of Relatum
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Image 1: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Dia Art Foundation,Installation view. Dia: Beacon, New York, © Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP. Photo: Bill Jackson Studio, New York.
Image 2: Nobuo Sekine, Phase—Mother Earth, 1968, Installation view. 1st Kobe Suma Rikyū Park Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition, October 1 – November 10, 1968. Photo: Osamu Murai.
Image 3: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Installation view. Dia Art Foundation, Dia: Beacon, New York. Photo: Louisa Riley-Smith.
Image 4: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Detail view, Dia Art Foundation, Dia: Beacon, New York. Photo: Louisa Riley-Smith.
Image 5: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Dia Art Foundation, Detail view. Dia: Beacon, New York, © Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP.
No copyright infringement is intended.
Abstract
This article examines an encounter with Lee Ufan’s installation, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, to better understand how its affect and effects engage the viewer and how meaning and understanding emerge from it. It also questions Relatum’s relevance in 2019, fifty years after it was originally created. An analysis of Relatum through the perspective of posthuman theory serves as a useful method to explore explicit links between theory and a work of art. This provides a deeper understanding of the power of art and language to articulate the nature of being and the capacity and potential of each to critique societies’ values and practices. Drawing on notions of subjectivity, interpretations of Lee Ufan’s work and its effects as well as on parallels made between 1969 and 2019, this text concludes that Relatum remains as relevant today as it would have done in 1969. Further study is required surrounding the potential of art to generate a deeper understanding of the human condition and its anticipated evolution. Engaging with the implications of the radical transformations ahead would support debate and preparations for the challenges to come.
Context
The purpose of this article is to examine Lee Ufan’s installation Relatum (formerly Iron Field) 1969/2019 (hereafter Relatum) to better understand how it evokes associations, communicates meaning and invites new thinking about humanity’s relationship with the world. This text also questions whether Relatum has maintained its authority as a significant and provocative artwork fifty years after it was created.
Underpinning this line of questioning is a shift in my understanding of today’s historical moment. Advanced Capitalism is a popular term used to define the 21st century’s algorithmically driven global economy, military technologies and cultures in which human and nonhuman interaction with science and technology is increasingly invasive. New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, although in many ways improving quality of life, can make decisions and perform tasks without direct human intervention and with little, if any, human control. As a consequence, the sense of human self-efficacy and agency has altered.[1] This condition is amplified by a contemporary paradigm shift in biology which is manifested as scientific advances in fields such as neuroscience, nanotechnology, biotechnology, bioemesis and international projects such as the Human Cell Atlas and the Human Genome Project.[2] The fundamental units of life are being discovered, mapped and modified and investment in the knowledge of all life forms, and their behaviours, has become profitable.[3]
The view of a displaced and dismantled subject of the human, is compounded too by an intensification of warnings that the threat of climate change is its contribution to extensive international humanitarian crises.[4] The understanding of the cyclical process of interdependence between human and nonhuman on a global scale has become evident: ‘humans are doing to the earth and it is reacting back’.[5] On a micro scale too, the notion of human individualism has changed.[6] Scientists have discovered that humans share genes with other animals and organisms, and that the human body is a composite of many diverse symbionts such as bacteria and microbiomes.[7]These live, interact and evolve in the mutual relationships necessary for normal physiological homeostasis.[8] It is in this contemporary context that the position of the human in contemporary art, remains an ongoing question for my scholarship and practice-based research. Where and how does the human exist in relation to nature, other species and technology? What is human and what does the future look like?
As demonstrated by a small sample of national and international exhibitions in London’s major art institutions this year, the matter of the 21st century’s context has been acknowledged by the contemporary world of art. Examples from 2019 include the exhibition, Is This Tomorrow? at the Whitechapel Galleries, the Olafur Eliasson: In Real-Life exhibition at London’s Tate Modern, a 3-year schedule of events titled, General Ecology at the Serpentine Galleries, and the current exhibition, Eco-Visionaries: Confronting our planet in a state of emergency, at the Royal Academy.[9] Given the gravitas and authority of London’s major art institutions, the significance of this year’s exhibitions cannot be ignored: the power of art to communicate and embody a political and ecological moment could be said to be validated.
It was with these thoughts that I visited Lee Ufan’s new exhibition at Dia: Beacon, New York. Titled Lee Ufan, this exhibition consists of five of Lee’s large scale, three-dimensional early works.[10] The gallery’s 2-year long-view scheduling of this exhibition reflects the significance it places on the work, both in the late 1960s, and now.[11]
Relatum was acquired by the Dia Art Foundation in 2017.[12] This large-scale installation is highly representative of Lee’s three-dimensional, site-specific work and of the aims and work of the Mono-ha movement of which Lee was a leading artist and philosopher.[13] Like Lee’s other works, ranging from the late 1960s to the present day, it is part of an iterative series. The use of natural and modest industrial materials along with minimal distilled gestures is typical of his restrained approach and style. Together, these generate a sense of emptiness and of the temporary. In his collection of writings, The Art of the Encounter, Lee describes his materials and processes as simplified and disciplined. He restricts and refines his actions, repeating them indefinitely, using these to transform the work into something new. His aim, he states, is to transform ‘just what is into just what is’.[14]
In 1972, Lee re-titled all of his three-dimensional works (previously made and not yet made), Relatum.[15] This act explicitly draws attention away from the material objects themselves and towards the dynamic relationships occurring between the viewer and his or her surroundings. It emphasises the spatial and temporal quality of these works and the ongoing dialogue between them. It makes clear that Lee’s works are as much about the invisible as the visible. This radical act is noteworthy too because it reveals Lee’s ongoing critique of the impact of Westernisation on all aspects of life in East Asia.[16] Lee’s political notions are evident: he creates conditions that are designed to be inclusive and shared, and ‘wherein hierarchies between self and other, man and nature dissolve, opening up a sense of infinity that transcends the human.’[17]
Image 1: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Dia Art Foundation, Installation view. Dia: Beacon, New York, © Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP. Photo: Bill Jackson Studio, New York.
Lee’s installation, Relatum will be the focus of my research in part because of its instant and memorable mesmerising impact on me as a viewer.
This ephemeral work’s quiet elegant aesthetic and its underlying palpable tension creates an immediate sense of place in which the viewer is invited to set aside their day-to-day expectations and to engage directly with a new, alternative, concrete reality. Lee’s aim, to present the world as-it-is, resonates with my own intentions to embody an aesthetic condition of today’s uncertain political and ecological moment. I am interested to learn how his system of thought takes on a political dimension and whether these can be applied to today’s context. I am eager too, to identify how meaning emerges from this work: formally, conceptually and viscerally so that I might investigate and test these tactics in my own studio-practice. By analysing Lee’s methods and themes alongside posthuman theory, a deeper understanding of the complexities of today’s context might be gained. This may serve as a useful perspective through which to explore and understand Lee’s ideas and reveal any significance Relatum has to today’s viewers. An analysis of Relatum might also offer unexpected insights on current posthuman discourse and on what it means to be human in the 21st Century.
Posthuman perspective
The abundance of transdisciplinary scholarship surrounding the future of Homo sapiens presents a complex and often paradoxical range of views. This can be illustrated, albeit at very superficial level, by a sample of an ever-increasing number of derivatives each presenting different versions for the future of our species: panhuman, transhuman, inhuman, anti-human, a-human and post-cyborg, for example. Although there are important differences there is also a shared vision of a transformation in which all living matter becomes ever-more entangled and dependent on technology. Specifically, it is the complexity and autonomy of machines, and the power of science and technology to reshape the human self and human relationships with the world, which lies at the core of posthuman thinking.[18]The number of theoretical strands of posthumanism is debatable. Bayne, for example, in posthumanism: a navigation aid for educators, provides three distinct categories. Forlano, however, in Posthumanism and Design, identifies five.[19]For the purpose of supporting an analysis of Relatum, I will refer to transhuman, critical posthuman and in-human theories in this text.
Transhumanist ideas frame the human as continually striving to become a refined and augmented biotechnologically enhanced version of itself. Current humanity, for transhumanist is not the evolutionary endpoint. Its vision implies opportunities for healthier and longer lives, enhanced memory and intellectual capabilities and the possibility of greater control over personal decisions and experiences. The promise of cultivating humanity’s potential and overcoming biological limitations is appealing. Criticisms of transhumanism include concerns surrounding the ethics of altering human biology and of the divisions, inequalities and disruptions within, and to societies, that these could lead to.[20] Advocates such as Nick Bostrom, leader of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, also acknowledges that exploitation of new technologies will cause ‘enormous harm, ranging all the way to the extreme possibility of intelligent life becoming extinct.’[21] Feminist critics such as Barad take issue with transhuman exceptionalism questioning the processes and distribution of authority and the positioning of human among both living and non-living.[22] Similarly, Braidotti reminds us that the technologically enhanced bodies of today’s superstars are achieved at the expense of communities of underpaid anonymous others: the workforce at the bottom of the chain who supply and recycle the minerals needed to fuel the ‘technology driven global economy without ever accessing it themselves’.[23]
Critical posthumanism, as described by Braidotti, is the historical moment which looks to both humanism and anti-humanism to generate new alternatives of inclusivity and to ‘extending community to all environmental interconnections.[24] Influenced primarily by the monastic philosophy of Spinoza, post-structural philosophies and post-colonial and feminist theories, Braidotti’s posthuman is accountable rather than vulnerable or powerless. In contrast to the displaced and dismantled human of today’s context, her posthuman subject is located ‘in the flow of relations with multiple others.’[25]Like the pioneering intellectual Donna Haraway, Braidotti sees the subject not defined as a singular individual, but as one with a strong sense of collectivity, relationality and interconnectivity between self, and all others.[26]Braidotti’s reintroduction of the question of the subject in contemporary materialism and the explicit link she makes between her theory and today’s historical moment is considered by Van der Zaag, as the most significant contribution of Braidotti’s book, The Posthuman.[27]I also find Braidotti’s unravelling of the binaries advanced by Western philosophy, particularly helpful when thinking critically about what human actually is and what it could become. Braidotti’s unapologetically affirmative vision too, is persuasive. It not only speaks to the politics of power in our times but also to the urgent need to reframe human relationships with nature.
Of her critics, Van Ingen, argues that Braidotti’s philosophical framework and ideas for alternatives to today’s societies and politics are inconsistent and unsustainable and, he states, ‘therefore lacking in seriousness.’[28]My criticism lies with the feasibility of her ideas given the exponentially increasing growth of technology coupled with the systemic drive for profit across the globe. Ethical questions surrounding societies’ evolving values (on advances in biology and medicine, for example) will be the focus of debate, but decisions I believe, will arrive in the form of products along with their accompanying persuasive language. Products will answer to market forces revealing the values of the society in which they are sold. And, to the extent that they are established, these values will translate into human populations. Braidotti views active alliances between biotechnologies, capitalism and individualism as a lingering humanistic definition of the subject.[29]
Relatum through a posthuman perspective
Nobuo Sekine’s site specific outdoor work, Phase-Mother Earth, 1969, is widely accepted as the catalyst for the Mono-ha movement and responsible for the important change in direction seen in Lee’s artistic practice at that time.[30] Consisting of a 7-foot, hand-dug cylinder of packed soil Nobuo’s work exposed the earth and its identical negative hollowed-out void. The immersive physical experience and connectedness of material, site and viewer articulates the Mono ha artists’ and Lee’s ongoing desire to construct a new language and practice as a critique of their times. Its radical statement, profound presence and impermanence stunned the Japanese art world.[31] At the end of the event, the hole was refilled as if nothing had happened. Lee describes Phase-Mother Earth as being a direct encounter with the natural world.[32]
Image 2: Nobuo Sekine, Phase—Mother Earth, 1968, Installation view. 1st Kobe Suma Rikyū Park Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition, October 1 – November 10, 1968. Photo: Osamu Murai.
Throughout his writing and artistic practice Lee attaches great importance to encounters. Instead of signifiers, he creates conditions for durational relationships to develop between viewer, form and site. Existing without artistic manipulation, materials are temporarily positioned so that they can make new and dynamic connections: they become actively dependent on each other and on the viewer and their surroundings to function. Each element too, has an equal part to play in the creation of light and dark, depth, distance, duration and form. In a sense, this is similar to Braidotti’s vision of the posthuman subject located ‘in the flow of relations with multiple others.’[33]
In recasting an object as a network of relations, Lee once again explicitly draws attention to the world of phenomenological perception arising from the dynamics of an event.[34] When considered alongside his statement, ‘One-sided demand of gaze is by now tantamount to violence’ this installation’s relational model could be viewed as exemplifying the differences inherent in European philosophy and viewed as a protest against the overpowering effects of Westernisation that shaped post-war Korea and Japan.[35] Like Braidotti’s theory, Lee’s practice can be seen to be influenced by his historical location and inherently politically charged.[36]The concept and norms of difference which underpin modern European philosophy and politics, still continue to have real-life implications for Lee and Braidotti. Braidotti states that, ‘being a woman is always already there as the ontological precondition for my existential becoming as a subject.’[37]And, in his book, The Art of the Encounter, Lee describes his experience of otherness as being a man in the middle between Japan, Korea, and the West.[38]
Image 3: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Installation view. Dia Art Foundation, Dia: Beacon, New York. Photo: Louisa Riley-Smith.
The designated role of each material in Lee’s installation seems clear. In its human-found state the sand is emblematic of nature and of the deep time of earth’s origins and processes. In contrast, the multiples of strong steel rods belong to the modern world of production. The juxtaposition of human-found and human-made coexisting without hierarchy and co-dependent, could also be interpreted as opposing the anthropocentric view that regards humans as superior to, and distinct from, the environment. This acts as a reminder of today’s urgent need to reposition the human species in relation to nature and culture for the sake of the health of the planet. Braidotti acknowledges these concerns about the role and position of human. In defining her vision for a future critical posthuman subject she says, ‘we need to devise new social, ethical and discursive schemes of subject formation to match the profound transformations we are undergoing.’[39] Political, cultural and environmental parallels drawn between 1969 and 2019 support the suggestion that Braidotti’s statement could be equally relevant to the context of Japan in 1969.[40]
Image 4: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Detail view. Dia Art Foundation, Dia: Beacon, New York. Photo: Louisa Riley-Smith.
Through new connections and relationships each element of this installation is exposed. Their properties, limitations and difference are revealed in the intrinsic contingency of their situation. The 20,000 vertical rods resist gravity despite the uncertain support of soft sand, for example, and a palpable sense of suspense is generated through the perceived precariousness that this arrangement creates. Lee’s tactics remind us that everything is interconnected and that precarity is not only a manmade disruption. It functions as a reminder too that day-to-day life is also contingent: even the ecologies of own bodies can become suddenly, or slowly, with or without warning, hostile.[41]In the context of ecological and political crises, multi-scalar insecurity and instability and ongoing threats to ecosystems and communities are called to mind. In this sense, Relatum evokes the notion of an irresistibly unwatchable slow-motion catastrophe: a landscape that appears inevitably and increasingly uninhabitable. Is this just one more unwatchable emerging crisis? Of my reaction, Braidotti might say that anxiety about the human is everywhere. ‘We are together on a sinking ship - in this together. We are the catastrophe and we are the subject of this.’[42]
Traces of human presence are observed in the gestures of hands and body and in the scale of this work. The barren emptiness of the site, however, could signify the futility of repetitive human labour. This suggests an absence of human. One reading of Lee’s work could be that we were here. Have we de-camped? Or, have we just disappeared? This interpretation involves imagining a world without humans, or one in which human life as we understand it today, is no longer possible. Each of the singular, slightly dissimilar steel rods might be seen to represent a finite, contingent existence supported by sand that is ultimately indifferent to its existence. Geographer Nigel Clark argues that, human life and its continuing existence is dependent on conditions created by current and former natural forces and life forms of which many are already extinct. He suggests that humans should ‘view existence as a gift’ and embrace a future in which current modes of humanity are not the evolutionary endpoint.[43] This second interpretation of Relatum shifts the position and role of Homo sapiens from one of a critical posthuman subject interconnecting in a network of relations with the world, to the prospect of extinction.[44] Human extinction here refers to inhuman forms of being: forces and forms of life and matter without trace of human forms of subjectivity’.[45]
While materials, form, scale and the conventions of the gallery space are familiar, the sense of absence and the unknown in this work is powerful. The unseen of this event is tangible, questions about the human condition and the future seem unavoidable. Prompting thoughts and memories of unexpected manmade-natural events and disasters, Lee’s 50-year-old installation appears vivid with meaning in 2019. In both eras the complicit link between the human-caused and the naturally occurring is complicated and as such obscured.[46] It seems that the natural and the human are everywhere co-factors in disaster. Contemporary philosopher, writer and ecologist, Timothy Morton declares that the defining characteristic of our times is not simply that humans are responsible for global warming and ecological destruction, but that they know they are.[47] A sense of shared vulnerability in the face of annihilation might, suggests Braidotti, defamiliarise the dominant forms of humanity and compel humans to think more carefully and critically about ‘what we are actually in the process of becoming.’[48]
Lee has used a simple visual tactic with spectacular effect. This is a compelling unwatchable event with an instant memorable connection. Biological autonomic responses are activated, and uncertainty and even anxiety is felt. Political theorist Brian Massumi would claim that this affect and its effects are perceived in the body first, and then half a second later received by the speaking, thinking, and self-aware subject. Within this small but crucially significant moment, the body is able to make sense of the world by locating the familiar and using it as a background setting for the new and the unknown. This unbidden process of constructing meaning from encounters and events, he says, is continuous, and characterised by a capacity and potential to act and be acted on. To ‘affect and to be affected’ he says, is to be open to the world and open to change.[49]
Image 5: Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Iron Field), 1969/2019, Dia Art Foundation, Detail view. Dia: Beacon, New York, © Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP.
It is this conceivable change he argues that makes affect immediately proto-political. As both viewer and participant I am affected physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Beguiled and curious, I am drawn into the experience compelled to make sense of the unexpected, unknown and unfamiliar in front of me. Without prompting, memories, associations, connections, familiar and unfamiliar thoughts, speculation about the human condition, its changing context and its ongoing predicaments is evoked. Meaning emerges from this encounter: it is inescapable.
Posthuman theory through the perspective of Relatum
In this installation, Lee has made strategic use of natural and man-made elements to join nature with human sensory physiology. Nature is presented as a physical force manifested through the effect of disparate materials in their natural state, brought together to incite both perceptual and physical suspense. Engaging directly with Relatum is an immersive and active act. It is paying attention, not only with sight, but with all human senses.[50] An encounter with Relatum is explicitly spatial and temporal, experienced as an unfolding physical and visceral sensation perceived through the body. In his writing, Lee pays tribute to the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty for whom the body is the only means for gaining access to the world.[51] Lee states that he wants his work to transcend language and self-identity and to communicate through the medium of the body.[52] Damasio argues that it is the biological processes of the body (the endocrine, immune and nervous systems for example), that are at the root of feelings, which, along with interpretations of the present moment and an anticipated future, enriches the process of intellectualisation.[53] Posthuman theory supports an exploration of what it means to be human and posthuman and offers speculative versions of the future, but, seen through the lens of Relatum, theoretical understanding shifts from a purely cognitive process to include a physical and a felt knowledge.[54]
The manner in which Relatum is perceived also depends on the physical position or political standpoint from which it is viewed. Each time the viewer moves their perspective changes and they see something different. Posthuman theories support and encourage new thinking about the changes to come. A direct encounter with Relatum, however, generates a clearer understanding that challenges involved in any process of change can be uncomfortable and even disturbing. Transformation means different things to different people because their values express different cultural and emotional ties related to location and well-being. Determinations about the occurrence of transformations too ‘often depend on where one ‘sits-in-the-system’.[55] Braidotti and Chakrabarty conclude that Homo sapiens evolution from ‘biological to geological agents calls for re-compositions of both subjectivity and community’ but given the vast number of diverse viewpoints how will we know when a change has occurred and who will make this determination?[56] The real-life implications of colonialism and the binary opposition of modern Western thought motivated Lee and Braidotti to critique modern power structures and societies’ norms and to offer alternative visions of the future. How will others experience and interpret the changes they propose, I wonder. As beneficial, or harmful? How can posthuman transformation be understood without (re)privileging the human? The mutation of Homo sapiens seems certain but I suggest that any affirmative and generative posthuman future looks uncertain given its reliance on mutual understanding, good will and ethical governance characterised by the continuing expansion and power of capitalism.
Conclusion
Lee’s installation, Relatum, is engineered to provide a concrete spaciotemporal experience of the unknown. Visual and other tactics are used by Lee to draw attention to the dynamic relationships occurring within the metaphysical moment of the encounter with it. Ultimately, the altered order and structure of materials, space, time and the viewer effects their energy, behaviour and evolution: the potential for change is created. The viewer is invited to set aside preconceived ideas and to be open to seeing themselves and others in a new way.
By paying attention with all senses to what is presented, meaning emerges. This is inescapable. Lee’s strategic use of natural and man-made elements to join nature with human sensory physiology stimulates the perceptual and physical sense of precariousness. In the first instance meaning develops as an unspoken autonomic physical response and then, almost immediately, as embodied knowledge. These consist of inferences, connections and memories of lived experiences and cultural norms. Making sense of the unfamiliar, it seems, is an unavoidable somatic and cerebral process too.
Interpretations of the work are dependent on the viewer’s physical position, historical location and political standpoint. Relatum can be interpreted in a number of ways but its call for the recognition of difference, for transformation, its visual manifestation of nature as a physical force and its proto-political dimension remain as effective on the human physiology today as it would have done in 1969.
Parallels between 1969 and 2019 help explain Relatum’s affect and effects in both eras. A rejection of the distribution of societal power, world-changing advances in science and technology and environmental degradation for example, continue as features of the modern world. Alternative futures in 1969 and 2019 may be articulated differently but they emerge from similar conditions: human-caused catastrophes, violations and inequalities; and, capitalism’s global systems and values. Context transforms the specifics of our understanding about what it means to be human and what the future might look like but from the viewpoint of either year, Lee’s systems of thought and practice could be said to be ‘as formally and conceptually relevant now as it was at its conception.’[57]
In the context of the 21st century, traditional understanding of human has not only been displaced and dismantled, it has altered beyond the concepts articulated by Lee in 1969. Today’s human has evolved to become a geological force, larger than its biological entity and characterised by new symbiotic relationships with machines. As a consequence of advances in science and technology, humans are fully united with all species under the market economy and in their shared vulnerability of an unknown future. Hardt and Negri suggest that fixed boundaries and binary oppositions have already given way to the new power of corporate capital and globalisation because these are the conditions of possibility on which they thrive.[58]
Relatum is not describing a new phenomenon as it appears in any specific historical era and it points to more than understanding, or changing, a particular cultural reality. Lee’s work is a proposal about the nature of being as well as a proposition directed at political and social transformation. Through the lens of posthuman theories understanding and imagining models of subjectivity is enriched. In different eras and cultures Relatum demonstrates that subjectivity is moving and changeable and always as an effect of relationships with others and the world. This resonates closely with Braidotti’s vision of sustainable modern nomadic subjectivity as being ‘always in the process of becoming.’[59]
Analysis of posthuman discourse through the lens of a metaphysical encounter with Relatum is also enriched as theoretical understanding shifts from a purely cognitive process to include a physical and a felt knowledge. Insights revealed, and the greater depth of meanings generated, allows the viewer to gain a more sophisticated relationship with the world.
Relatum is not digitally aided or mediated, nor does not incorporate or present an explicit connection to current world-changing technologically. Its power to communicate and embody today’s posthuman condition, however, could be said to be validated by its capacity to engage the viewer in feeling and thinking critically and creatively about how cultural and technological patterns shape subjectivity and what this will mean for the future of the human species. Lee’s work reminds us that the role of art is about much more than communicating awareness.
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United Nations, ‘Climate Change’, United Nations Shaping our future together [online] 2019 <https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate- change/> [accessed 17 November 2019]
Van der Zaag, Annette-Carina ‘On posthuman subjectivity’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 9.3 (2015), 330-336
Van Ingen, Michiel, ‘The Nature/Culture Divide? The Contradictions of Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman’, Journal of Critical Realism, 15.5 (2016), 530- 542. Taylor Francis Online
FootNOTES
[1] Nick Bostrom, ‘The Future of Humanity’, Nick Bostrom’s Home Page [online] <https://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/future.pdf> [accessed 11 December 2019] (p. 17 para 1 of 5).
[2] Human Cell Atlas, ‘Mission’, Human Cell Atlas [online] <https://www.humancellatlas.org/> [accessed 4 January 2019] (para 1-6 of 6).
NIH, ‘What is the Human Genome Project?’, NIH National Human Genome Research Institute [online]<https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project/What > [accessed 5 November 2019] (para 1-12 of 12).
[3] NIH, ‘What is genome editing?’, NIH National Human Genome Research Institute [online]
<https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/what-is-Genome-Editing> [accessed 5 November 2019] (para 1-5 of 5).
Centre for the Humanities Utrecht University, Prof. Rosi Braidotti - Keynote Lecture- Posthumanism and Society Conference, New York 9 May 2015 [online video] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S3CulNbQ1M> [accessed 16 December 2018].
[4] United Nations, ‘Climate Change’, United Nations Shaping our future together [online] 2019 <https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate-change/> [accessed 17 November 2019] (para 1 of 17).
[5] HKW Anthropocene, Anthropocene Lecture: Bruno Latour [online video] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtaEJo-jo8Q> [accessed 15 November 2018].
[6] The term Individualism here refers to the belief and practice that every person is autonomous, unique and self-reliant.
[7] Scientific American, ‘How closely related are humans to apes and other animals? How do scientists measure that? Are humans related to plants at all?’ [online] 23 October 2000 <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-closely-related-are-h/> [accessed 19 November 2019] (para 7 of 8).
[8] Serpentine Galleries, Work Marathon 2018: Phoebe Tickell [online video] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGtVfddMm4E&t=6s> [accessed 17 January 2019].
Tickell explains the symbiotic relationships between multitudes of organisms and bacteria as essential for our survival and evolution.
[9] Is This Tomorrow? [exhibition] (Whitechapel Galleries, London: 14 February 2019 – 12 May 2019).
Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life [exhibition] (Tate Modern, London: 11 July 2019 – 5 January 2020).
General Ecology [exhibition] (Serpentine Galleries, London: 2018-2020).
Is This Tomorrow? [exhibition] (Whitechapel Galleries, London: 14 February 2019 – 12 May 2019).
[10] Lee Ufan retains the traditional Korean name order of family name first and given name last.
[11] The 2-year schedule provides an opportunity for academia and viewer to evaluate the connections between Lee’s works alongside those of his contemporaries and of international artists of corresponding art movements, for the first time.
[12] Dia Art Foundation, ‘About Dia’, Dia: [online] <https://www.diaart.org/about/about-dia> [accessed 1 July 2019].
[13] Mon-ha (translated mockingly as School of Things) was Japan’s first international contemporary art movement. Motivated to critique western Cartesian ideology and excessive Western post-war consumer production and image overload in Japan, its loosely affiliated group of Japanese and Korean artists (including Lee Ufan, Haraguchi Noriyuki, Sekine Nobuo, Koshimizu Susumu, Suga Kishio) formed links between art and philosophy in order to create a new language of art. Operating between 1968 to 1975, Mono-ha coincided with international art movements across the globe: Arte Povera in Italy; Beuys in Germany; and, Process Art and Earthworks in the United States.
[14] Lee Ufan, The Art of the Encounter (London: Lisson Gallery, 2008), p. 238.
[15] Relatum is a Latin word denoting objects or events between which a relation exists.
[16] In his article America as desire and violence: Americanisation in post-war Japan and Asia during the Cold War, (2003), Shunya Yoshima argues that America is recognised as the hegemonic power that symbolises modernity in East Asia. He argues that the impact of globalisation and Westernisation characterises the consciousness and culture of East Asia then, and today.
[17] Alexandra Munro, ‘Stand Still a Moment’, Alexandra Munro [online] (10, June 2011) <http://www.alexandramunroe.com/stand-still-a-moment/> [accessed 24 October 2019] (para 7 of 44).
[18] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 43.
[19] Siân Bayne, ‘posthumanism: a navigation aid for educators’, on_education. Journal for Research and Debate, 2. (2018). on_education (para 15 of 43).
Bayne abbreviates and orders posthuman scholarship into three distinct categories: critical posthumanism, technological posthumanism and ecological posthumanism.
Laura Forlano, ‘Posthuman and Design’, She ji The Journal of Design, Economic, and Innovation, 3.1. (2017), 16-29. Elsevier.
Forlano identifies five key strands of posthuman thinking: Actor Network Theory; Object Orientated Ontology and Things; Non-representational Theory; Transhumanism and Critical Posthumanism.
[21] Nick Bostrom, ‘Transhumanist Values’, Review of Contemporary Philosophy, 4. (2005), 3-14 (p. 4).
[22] Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, (Durham-London 2007), p. 136.
[23] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 90.
[24] Ibid. p. 37-54.
Braidotti’s critical posthumanism arises from anti-humanism and humanism. She expands this position by embracing the creative potential of the posthuman situation. Her theory is rooted in poststructuralism, the anti-universalism of feminism and the anti-colonial phenomenology of Frantz Fanon (1967) and of his teacher Amie Cesaire (1955).
Ibid. p. 190.
[25] Ibid. p. 50.
[26] Rosi, Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 49.
[27] Annette-Carina van der Zaag, ‘On posthuman subjectivity’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 9.3 (2015) p. 330.
Along with Braidotti, J Bennett, K Barad and E Grosz can be listed as leading scholars of new materialism. Drawing on combinations of theories including feminist, queer, critical race theory, cultural theory, science studies, environmental studies and others, new materialism embraces the vitality of matter to encompass the nonhuman as well as the human. Critics argue that by extending agency and social phenomena to nonhuman matter, new materialism reintroduces humanist values.
[28] Michiel van Ingen, ‘The Nature/Culture Divide? The Contradictions of Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman’, Journal of Critical Realism, 15.5 (2016), 530-542 (p.530). Taylor Francis Online.
[29] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 101.
[30] Nobuo Sekine, Phase-Mother Earth, 1968. Exhibited at the first Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition at Kobe Suma Rikyu Park, Japan.
[31] Alexandra Munro, ‘Stand Still a Moment’, Alexandra Munro [online] (10, June 2011) <http://www.alexandramunroe.com/stand-still-a-moment/> [accessed 24 October 2019] (para 23 of 44).
[32] Lee, Ufan, Beyond Being and Nothingness: On Sekine Nobuo (1970-1971), Review of Japanese Culture and Society, (December 2013), p. 238.
[33] Ibid. p. 50.
[34] Lee Ufan, The Art of the Encounter (London: Lisson Gallery, 2008), p. 32.
[35] Dia Art Foundation, ‘Exhibition Information’, Dia: [online] <https://www.diaart.org/media/_file/brochures/lee-4-19.pdf> [accessed 1 July 2019] (p 2 para 5 of 6). Gazing could be said to signify or reflect a power structure, or the nature of a relationship between subject(s), or, it could convey something about a situation. Who has the right or need to look at whom? for example.
[36] Alexandra Munro, ‘Stand Still a Moment’, Alexandra Munro [online] (10, June 2011) <http://www.alexandramunroe.com/stand-still-a-moment/> [accessed 24 October 2019] (para 17 of 44).
[37] Rosi Braidotti, Subjects Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, (Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 144.
[38] Lee Ufan, The Art of the Encounter (London: Lisson Gallery, 2008), p. 17.
[39] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 12.
[40] The late 1960s were as tumultuous as 2019. Parallels include; the similar strategies used by presidents Nixon and Trump of polarisation, fear mongering and a condemnation of the news media; world-changing manifestations of revolutionary science and technology; and, human-created disasters such as Hiroshima, and climate change. Both eras could be said to be characterised by political and social inequalities, disintegrating racial relations, environmental degradation, human rights issues and violations, corruption and mass public protests against these.
[41] NIH, ‘Autoimmune disorders’, MedlinePlus [online] <https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000816.htm> [accessed 11 December 2019] (para 1-3 of 7). An autoimmune disorder is a good example of this. It causes the immune system to attack healthy body tissue. Although there are over 80 types of autoimmune disorders, their causes remain unknown.
[42] Fridericianum, 02 Inhuman Symposium - Rosi Braidotti [online video] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJPR78DptA> [accessed 30 December 2018].
[43] Nigel Clark, Inhuman nature: sociable life on a dynamic planet (Sage, London, 2011), p. 95.
[44] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 49-82.
Critical posthuman subjectivity is not the prerogative of an individualised human self but viewed as a transversal entity and as an assemblage of human and nonhuman animals and the earth.
[45] Audra Mitchell, ‘Is IR going extinct?’ European Journal of International Relations, 23.1 (2017), 3-25 (para 25 of 57). Sage Choice.
[46] The five hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico this year, for example, are natural disasters only if you fail to note the effects of climate crisis on water temperatures.
[47]Alex Blasdel, , 'A reckoning for our species': the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene Tim Morton, ecologist and philosopher, The Guardian [online] (15 June 2017) <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/15/timothy-morton-anthropocene-philosopher> [accessed 21.10.19] (para 9 of 61).
Timothy Morton’s influence on the contemporary art world is seen in his interviews with leading artists and arts organisations, such as, Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Galleries and environmental artist Olafur Eliason.
[48] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 49-50.
[49] Brian Massumi, The Politics of Affect, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), p. ix.
[50] Proprioception draws out the subject's reactions to the qualities of the objects and space it perceives through all five senses. Tactile and visceral inner body sensations are received from receptors in internal organs, skin, muscles and joints and information sent to the brain by the nervous system so that the body can sense itself and its location in space.
[51] IEP, ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy [online] <https://www.iep.utm.edu/merleau/> [accessed 21 November 2019] (para 15 of 80).
[52] Lee Ufan, The Art of the Encounter (London: Lisson Gallery, 2008), p. 34.
[53] Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (New York: Pantheon Books, 2018), pp. 99-116 (p. 116).
[54] Human decisions and behaviour emerge not only from the brain but from the real-time interaction between a nervous system in a body and its environment.
[55] Mark Andrachuk and Derek Armitage, ‘Understanding social-ecological change and transformation through community perceptions of system identity,’ Ecology and Society, 20.4 (2015), (para 7 of 50). Ecology and Society.
[56] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 83.
[57] Dia Art Foundation, ‘Major Exhibition of Early Work by Lee Ufan, Pioneer of the Japanese Mono-Ha Movement Opens at Dia: Beacon on May 5, 2019’, Dia: [online] <https://www.diaart.org/about/press/major-exhibition-of-early-work-by-lee-ufan-pioneer-of-the-japanese-mono-ha-movement-opens-at-diabeacon-on-may-5-2019/type/text> [accessed 1 July 2019] (para 2 of 14).
[58] Tamar Sharon, Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology: The Case for Mediated Posthumanism, (Springer, 2014), pp.16-164.
[59] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 49.
©2020 Fiona Carruthers