Abstract
This paper discusses affective methodologies within a practice-based PhD research project using plant-based and bacterial biopolymers (bioplastics) for painting, site- responsive intervention, and collaborative video. Biopolymers have long material histories with a range of material qualities and affects that inform adventurous working methods. These methods and associated affects could be said to produce a biopolymer aesthetics and an empathetic materialism forms of onto-aesthetics involving what Elizabeth Grosz (2017) and Félix Guattari (2000) respectively term an onto-ethics and an ethico-aesthetics. In this paper, new materialisms are used to understand the pedagogical qualities of worlding through the artworks of the author, where biopolymer aesthetics generate adventure and bewilderment—aligning withJack Halberstam’s (2020) idea of an aesthetics of bewilderment.
Highlights
Biopolymers are adventurous materials—water-loving, thermoplastic, and porous—that have different material sensitivities and languages compared to petrochemical polymers
I use my own biopolymer art practices to think with the kinds of bewilderment that can generate worlding
Methodologies of adventure reorient, disorientate, and bewilder us via pedagogical and affective processes that involve “groping experimentation” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 44). This learning is manifest within biopolymer aesthetics, where making and becoming happen at the interface of regeneration and decomposition, as I argued and as is evident in the music video for Adventure (2019) and in Greywacke Love Poems: Returns (2019b)
Summary
Biopolymers (bioplastics) are adventurous materials—water-loving, thermoplastic, and porous—that have different material sensitivities and languages compared to petrochemical polymers (commonly used in art during the 20th and early 21st centuries). I use my own biopolymer art practices to think with the kinds of bewilderment that can generate worlding.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.