Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Journal of Environmental Media
  4. Online First Articles
  5. Online First Article
image of How to praxis after the end of the world with more than so-called humans?

Abstract

This article is a meditation on the relations between praxis, art and posthumanism. Particularly, it is an attempt at a kind of practice of meaning-making that entangles multiple theoretical fields with my own critical creative practice. The article utilizes the feminist methodology of diffraction to read multiple frameworks through each other without privileging one over the other. It explores a speculative potential in relation to meaning-making and utilizes three specific examples of my artworks that examine what it means to practise concepts that perform change. These artworks – and the theoretical orientations I argue for – take a posthumanist view of media, crude oil, water and sheep. I call this work ‘Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques’: solar practices. These include my recent work (2022), a dual 16-mm projection installation of crude oil film loops that were soaked in crude oil for one month; and a revisiting of the experimental videos (2017) and (2016). I build a kind of relation to posthumanist practices through the feminist philosopher River (Karen) Barad. While I emphasize the artworks, it is the kinds of non-representational practices and concepts that I explore in this meditation. My goal is to think through words and doings to enact concepts that perform change.

© 2024 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00115_1
2024-08-12
2025-02-08
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Aloi, G. and Makonnen, B. (eds) (2022), ‘Beyond posthumanism’, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 57, Spring, pp. 8–13, https://www.antennae.org.uk/copy-of-current-issue. Accessed 5 May 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Arnold, J. (2019), ‘From Inside This Earth’, Sarah Shepard Gallery, Larkspur, 18 April–1 June, https://www.johnnaarnold.com/from-inside-this-earth. Accessed 15 November 2023.
  3. Barad, K. M. (2007), Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Barad, K. M. (2012), ‘On touching: The inhuman that therefore I am’, Differences, 23:3, pp. 206–23, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1215/10407391-1892943.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Beale, T. (1839), The Natural History of the Sperm Whale, London: John Van Voorst.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Benjamin, R. (2018), ‘Reimagining science and technology’, AAS 21, 28 March, https://aas.princeton.edu/news/aas21-podcast-episode-12-reimagining-science-and-technology. Accessed 8 December 2018.
  7. Benjamin, R. (2019), Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Cambridge: Polity.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Bratton, B. H. (2015), The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Brice, W. R. (2009), Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin L. Drake and the Early Oil Industry, Oil City, PA: Oil Region Alliance.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Bridle, J. (2022), Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Burgess, R. (2020), ‘Fibershed’, https://fibershed.org/. Accessed 16 April 2024.
  12. Butler, O. E. (1997), Dawn, New York: Warner Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Cadena, M. de la and Blaser, M. (2018), A World of Many Worlds, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  14. Cage, J. (1985), ‘As Slow as Possible’, live performance, St. Burchardi Church, Halberstadt, Germany, 5 September 2001–4 September 2640.
  15. Catherine Cornum, L. (2019), ‘The creation story is a spaceship: Indigenous futurism and decolonial deep space’, voz a voz, https://www.are.na/block/3838278. Accessed 7 May 2023.
  16. Chun, W. H. K. (2011), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Coleman, B. (2009), ‘Race as technology’, Camera Obscura, 24:1(70), pp. 177–207, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1215/02705346-2008-018.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Coney, J. (1974), Space Is the Place, USA: North American Star System.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Crutzen, P. J. and Stoermer, E. F. (2000), ‘The anthropocene’, Global Change News Letter, 41, pp. 17–18.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Deren, M. (2005), Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film, Kingston, NY: Documentext.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Descartes, R. (2013), Meditations on First Philosophy: In Which the Existence of God and the Difference between the Human Soul and Body Are Demonstrated, Peterborough: Broadview Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Eastman Kodak Company (2022), ‘KODAK VISION Color Print Film 2383/3383’, March, https://www.kodak.com/content/products-brochures/Film/KODAK-VISION-Color-Print-Film-2383-3383-data-sheet.pdf. Accessed 16 April 2024.
  23. Escobar, A. (2018), Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Fanon, F. (2004), The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Flusser, V. (2012), Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise: With a Report by the Institut scientifique de recherche paranaturaliste, Posthumanities, vol. 23, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Gidal, P. (1976), Structural Film Anthology, London: British Film Institute.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Grebowicz, M. (2017), Whale Song, New York: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Grusin, R. (2015), ‘Radical mediation’, Critical Inquiry, 42:1, pp. 124–48, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1086/682998.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Hall, S. (1973), Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, Birmingham: University of Birmingham, http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/2962/. Accessed 9 March 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Haraway, D. (1992), ‘The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others’, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, pp. 295–337.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Haraway, D. J. (2003), The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago, IL: Bristol, Prickly Paradigm and University Presses Marketing.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Haraway, D. (2016a), ‘Tentacular thinking: Anthropocene, capitalocene, chthulucene’, e-flux, 75, September, n.pag., https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/. Accessed 1 June 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Haraway, D. J. (2016b), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Heidegger, M. (1977), The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, Harper Colophon Books, vol. CN 419, New York: Harper & Row.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Holland, J. (1835), The History and Description of Fossil Fuel, the Collieries, and Coal Trade of Great Britain, London: Whittaker, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433066377411. Accessed 16 August 2019.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. hooks, bell (1994), Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Horn, E. (2007), ‘There are no media’, Grey Room, 29, Fall, pp. 6–13, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1162/grey.2007.1.29.6.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Horn, E. (2022), ‘The Case of Air’, Anthropocene Curriculum, https://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/anthropogenic-markers/critical-environments/contribution/the-case-of-air. Accessed 23 May 2023.
  39. John 1, New American Standard Bible, https://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/john/1.html. Accessed 18 June 2024.
  40. Kahn, D. (2013), Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Kember, S. and Zylinska, J. (2012), Life after New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Kittler, F. A. (1999), Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Writing Science, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Latour, B. (1993), We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Loveless, N. (2019), How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1515/9781478004646.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Mackenzie, A. (2002), Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed, Technologies, London and New York: Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Merchant, C. (1989), The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, New York: Harper & Row.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Mustill, T. (2022), How to Speak Whale, New York: Grand Central Publishing.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Nakamura, L. (2014), ‘Indigenous circuits: Navajo women and the racialization of early electronic manufacture’, American Quarterly, 66:4, pp. 919–41, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1353/aq.2014.0070.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. Neumann, C. (1773), The Chemical Works of Caspar Neumann, 2nd ed., vol. II, London: J. and F. Rivington.
     [Google Scholar]
  50. Nowviskie, B. (2016), ‘Speculative+collections’, Nowviskie, 27 October, http://nowviskie.org/2016/speculative-collections/. Accessed 21 February 2017.
  51. Odell, J. (2020), How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Brooklyn, NY: MelvilleHouse.
     [Google Scholar]
  52. Parikka, J. (2015), A Geology of Media, Electronic Mediations, Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Peters, J. D. (2015), The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  54. Seu, M. (2022), Cyberfeminism Index, Los Angeles, CA: Inventory Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  55. Siegert, B. and Winthrop-Young, G. (2015), Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real, Meaning Systems, New York: Fordham University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  56. Silliman, B. (1855), Report on the Rock Oil, or Petroleum, from Venango Co., Pennsylvania: With Special Reference to Its Use for Illumination and Other Purposes, New Haven, CT: From JH Benham’s Steam Power Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  57. Stengers, I. (2010), Cosmopolitics I, Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  58. Steyerl, H. (2015), Factory of the Sun, German Pavilion, Venice Biennale.
     [Google Scholar]
  59. Steyerl, H. and Berardi, F. (2012), The Wretched of the Screen, Berlin: Sternberg Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  60. Stiegler, B. (2016), ‘Beyond the anthropocene’, UC Santa Cruz, 12 October.
  61. Todd, Z. (2014), ‘An Indigenous feminist’s take on the ontological turn: “Ontology” is just another word for colonialism (urbane adventurer: Amiskwacî)’, Uma (in)certa Antropologia, 24 October, https://umaincertaantropologia.org/2014/10/26/an-indigenous-feminists-take-on-the-ontological-turn-ontology-is-just-another-word-for-colonialism-urbane-adventurer-amiskwaci/. Accessed 12 May 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  62. Vargas, E. (2021), ‘Field notes for future petropractices: Refiguring oil and/as media’, Media+Environment, 3:1, n.pag., https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1525/001c.18931.
     [Google Scholar]
  63. Vargas, E. (2022), Refiguring Oil and/as Media: Field Notes for Future Petropractices, University of California, Santa Cruz, June, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1wc6s23g. Accessed 10 May 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  64. Vargas, E. and Siembieda, D. (2021), ‘Crude illumination: A crude oil art inspection’, Leonardo, 54:2, pp. 208–09, https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1162/leon_a_01978.
     [Google Scholar]
  65. Viveiros de Castro, E. (2013), ‘Cannibal metaphysics: Amerindian perspectivism’, Radical Philosophy, 182, November–December, pp. 17–28, https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/cannibal-metaphysics-amerindian-perspectivism. Accessed 20 March 2018.
     [Google Scholar]
  66. Wabuke, H. (2020), ‘Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the language of black speculative literature’, Los Angeles Review of Books, 27 August, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/afrofuturism-africanfuturism-and-the-language-of-black-speculative-literature/. Accessed 26 July 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  67. Wark, M. (2015), Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  68. Wolfe, C. (2010), What Is Posthumanism?, Posthumanities Series, vol. 8, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  69. Wittgenstein, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
     [Google Scholar]
  70. Zielinski, S. (2006), Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, Electronic Culture: History, Theory, Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00115_1
Loading
How to praxis after the end of the world with more than so-called humans?
Intellect ; https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1386/jem_00115_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00115_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00115_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keywords: media art ; naturecultures ; feminism ; petrocultures ; crude oil ; solar practices ; posthumanism ; media theory

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test