Exhibition floor talk | Soiled
Loading...
Output Type
Other
Publication Title
Exhibition floor talk | Soiled
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Place of Publication
Perth
School
School of Arts and Humanities / Centre for People, Place and Planet / Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)
Description
Soiled is a series of artworks that incorporate video art with performance, speculative documentary practice, and sculptural assemblages. The artworks function as a series of ‘soil acts’ that foster understanding of the complex interrelationships between humans, soil, and dirt. It examines how social narratives of what is soiled and what is pure reinforce hierarchies of race, gender, and society. In this tapestry of soil relations, an evolving narrative is created, where time, place, politics, and bodies intertwine with the substance of the ground. Soiled takes a critical approach to an essentialist idea of ‘nature’ that is disconnected and divided from humans. It looks to digital art as a resistant and speculative tool that challenges externalising classification practices alongside the human/non-humanbinary. Instead of viewing the environment as a resource for extracting life and capital from, the artworks in Soiled seek to expand the idea of soil and dirt as part of an ecology of being. To quote Mary Douglas, dirt is “matter out of place” (1966) that is socially and culturally constructed. Those who do not live within normative socially sanctioned confines are dirty and therefore out of place and a threat to the status quo. Within our social structures of ordering and discarding, some groups are dirtier than others due to hierarchies of classification. Following this thinking, Max Liboiron tells us that “where there is a system of power, there are necessarily rejected elements (or dirt), and one way to investigate systems is by studying what they reject, abject, and oppress” (2019). The artworks within Soiled wrestle with the problematics of this politics of purity and by extension, our separation from the environment, which helps contribute to the climate emergency that we now face. Through a speculative imaginary, the aim of Soiled is to present hope, critique, and warning. These works aim to pull the viewer otherwise, on a different trajectory. Dr Cassandra Tytler References Douglas, M. (1966/2000). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge. (p. 36). Liboiron, M. (2019, September 9). Waste is not “matter out of place”. Discard Studies. https://discardstudies.com/2019/09/09/waste-is-not-matter-out-of-place/
Comments
Tytler, C., & Adams, L. (2024). Exhibition floor talk | Soiled. Edith Cowan University.