The urgent need to transform humankind’s behaviour due to the direct and long-term dangers posed by climate change confronts those of us who pursue artistic research, much like people active in other areas, with the question of just what consequences this entails for our practice and its content. In this regard, various strategies can be made out: one can, for instance, calculate the carbon footprint of artistic research activities, thereby altering the “how” without questioning the “what”. While this might be a laudable undertaking, artists and artistic researchers aren’t necessarily experts at doing so; they would instead be users of knowledge from other disciplines. A deeper-reaching approach would be to engage with nature and climate change on the substantive level. And in actual fact, it cannot be denied that the number of projects that place nature in an artistic context is currently seeing a massive increase. For instance, there have been projects where plants are equipped with sensors and made part of musical performances and/or art exhibitions. But does such importation of (minimal bits of) nature to artistic spaces (i.e., concert or exhibition halls) necessarily benefit that which is thus imported? The main point here is probably to encourage reflection upon nature—which may indeed be something meaningful. In doing so, however, one is hard-pressed to avoid the impression of nature’s being “used” in a way that is thoroughly analogous to the use of “exotic” instruments and/or other elements in European art music. Insofar as we call for ethnomusicologically informed practices where transcultural artistic projects are concerned,5 wouldn’t we have to bring just such an attitude to bear vis-à-vis the importation of nature into art? And shouldn’t we then dig deeper still and seek to acquire even more knowledge of “nature”?

Keeping the above in mind, we can say that the area where artists are most skilled is that of (re-)defining their own disciplines. And as B. Latour (2015) showed, the concepts of nature and culture are mutually contingent—for which reason he proposed the term “natureculture”, which recognises the inseparability of biophysically and socially formed relationships.6 The questions sketched out in the following might hence serve as a starting point for approaching a “sympoetic” (Haraway 2016) practice of artistic research. Might we, in this way, succeed in using artistic research to transition from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene?7

  • What consequences result when we view the concepts of “nature” and “culture” (Latour 2015) as mutually contingent and accept that nature extends into human beings?8 And can we leave behind humankind’s supposed supremacy over the non-human? If yes, then how?
  • Can we act in a way that is mindful of how every species on this planet is engaged in constant interplay with a large number of other species, of how their very existences depend upon each other? What would change if we conceived of biological evolution not as the survival of the fittest but as the survival of the interdependently adapted?
  • How can we overcome the industrial-era mode of thought—misleading in terms of both biological and technological evolution—in which universal linear progress is assumed?
  • To whom would these questions be relevant? Can one assume that our present day’s technologically maximised human influence on the biosphere (the “Anthropocene”) affects all humans and non-humans equally? Should, therefore, dealing with this problem and the search for new relationships between ALL inhabitants of the biosphere be relevant to all people in all cases, independent of nationality, culture, ethnic belonging, gender, and wealth?
  • How can artists contribute? Are we capable of developing a sustainable way forward by vacating or at least questioning anthropocentric spaces? Must art be artificial? Could an art that questions the necessity of itself being non-natural (i.e., artificial) contribute to those changes of thought patterns and value systems that are needed in order to achieve sustainable and balanced relations between humans and non-humans? Can listening to, exploring, questioning, and reconfiguring the supposed line of demarcation between nature and culture and/or art lead to new “natureculture art practices” without romanticising nature in the process?
  • How might one realise such natureculture art practices? Could, with an eye to transcultural research, natureculture art practices be based on mutually enriching interactions between humans and non-humans? What would result if ethnomusicologically based field research were expanded to non-humans? What experts would be needed in order to do so? Biologists? Ecomusicologists? Indigenous/local communities with situated knowledge? Can taboos and/or local traditions encompass the experience and knowledge accumulated over centuries of interaction between humans and non-humans as well as ways of achieving balance between both? Might a dialogue between differing ontologies and values systems be created as a necessary basis for thorough and unprejudiced observations? Would it be helpful to employ special equipment that enables perception beyond human senses (ultra- or infrasound, ultraviolet, infrared)? What awareness of non-human time scales (fast-forward/slow-motion) would natureculture art practices require? How slowly and cautiously should the step from observation to interpretation and action be taken? And how might the careful identification of areas in which artists can non-invasively develop natureculture art practices be undertaken?

It would be rewarding, in any case, to engage with these questions rather than avoiding them.

  1. See www.mdw.ac.at/creativemisunderstandings and www.mdw.ac.at/magazin/index.php/2019/11/29/kreative-missverstaendnisse-methodologien-der-inspiration
  2. Cf. Fuentes 2010, Haraway 2003.
  3. Cf., Albrecht, Glenn A.; Van Horn, Gavin: Exiting the Anthropocene and entering the Symbiocene., 2016. humansandnature.org/exiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the-symbiocene
  4. Points 2–4 are based in part on Rupert Riedl, Evolution und Erkenntnis. Piper 1982, and Rupert Riedl: Zeus, Darwin und Russels Huhn. K&S 1994.
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