Abstract
Abstract Motivated by a sense of ethical obligation and environmental urgency, I commissioned a Toronto-based artist to take a portrait of a “more-than-human” me that embodied nonhuman elements. The aim of this artistic endeavor was to re-evaluate humans' impact on and relationship with the organic and non-organic beings and stuff with which we are entangled. My aim with the resulting portrait, “Mossification,” was three-fold: to visually represent a more-than-human (multiple-singular) self; to subvert the human-centric portrait by giving moss and lichen more visual space and symbolic agency; finally, to suggest, through movement in the form of a triptych, that if we do not change, humans will end up buried under by nature. This short essay is broken down in three parts. In the first two, I provide philosophical context then synthesize a brief history of portraiture with the aim of showing how “Mossification” subverts the genre. In the final part, I demonstrate how “Mossification” might be positively received but nonetheless fails to embody transcorporeality because of its entanglement with neoliberal systems that instrumentalize and objectify nature. I conclude that even though “Mossification” is problematic, it remains a productive visual experiment because of its generative capacity to destabilize human-centric representative traditions and symbolic codes.
Highlights
Motivated by a sense of ethical obligation and environmental urgency, I commissioned a Torontobased artist to take a portrait of a “more-than-human” me that embodied nonhuman elements
In the pursuit of social status, power and prestige, we instrumentalize time and resources as well as our bodies, each other and nature in the never-ending pursuit of more; more, bigger, better, faster, disposable goods resulting in the production of tons of land and water waste and emitting atmospheric pollution in an unsustainable model of resource extraction that has changed the Earth’s geology and ecosystems
The publisher Elsevier launched a new academic journal, Anthropocene, in 2013, with countless academic articles published worldwide on the topic before and since; popular media, too, has intensified discourse around the anthropocene, species extinction, climate change and environmental rights issues, with countless books, documentaries and television shows targeted to the general public
Summary
With so much buzz on the urgency to re-evaluate our impact on and relationship with the organic and non-organic beings and stuff with which we are entangled, my aim with “Mossification” was three-fold: to visually represent a more-than-human self; to subvert the human-centric portrait by giving moss and lichen more visual space and symbolic agency; to suggest, through movement in the form of a triptych, that if we do not change, humans will end up buried under by nature. A turning-point one might characterize as ‘early modernity,’ the Cartesian framework positions human beings as subjects apprehending the world, while nature and its many manifestations are reduced to mere objects. Heidegger is opposed to anthropocentrism: human beings do not determine the meaning of the natural or living world. Unlike the novel and the poem, “Mossification” is a text-object with a unique function and aura
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