'Field'- Canvas

'Field'- Canvas

Field- Canvas (2024) – NTRO Rationale

This non-traditional research output is derived from a Performance Studies, intermedial exploration of de-anthropocentric performativity.

The core problem of the research is ‘how can the body perform inside an assemblage of equally performing materials as an “intra-actant”?’* Theoretically, this inquiry is derived from theories of performatives, acknowledging Austin’s (1975) notion of the ‘performative’, wherein the ‘thing performs itself’, post-humanism i.e., ‘A post-humanist account calls into question the givenness of the differential categories of “human” and “nonhuman,” examining the practices through which these differential boundaries are stabilised and destabilised…’ (Barad, 2003: 808), and new materialism ‘…a term coined in the 1990s to describe a theoretical turn away from the persistent dualism in modern and humanist traditions whose influence are present in much cultural theory’ (Dolphijn et al., 2012, cited in Sanzo, 2018: 1).

Specifically, Barad, through a post-structural feminist lens, emphasises ‘how matter comes to matter’ (2003). In this new materialist approach Barad recommends the operational paradigm of performativity. Barad states,
"A performative understanding of discursive practices challenges the re-presentationalist belief in the power of words to represent pre-existing things. Performativity, properly construed, is not an invitation to turn everything (including material bodies) into words; on the contrary, performativity is precisely a contestation of the excessive power granted to language to determine what is real" (Barad, 2003: 2).

'Field – Canvas’ (2024) created by David Fenton as the sole artist/performer, is comprised of one still image derived from a previous NTRO series called ‘Field’ White-card. Within ‘Field’ white-card there are five chapters. The image for ‘Field – Canvas’ is derived from the first chapter entitled ‘Range’ (2024), which is an intermedial black and white performance of the researcher’s body embedded in an assemblage of white card diorama construction.

The resulting research question that underpins this NTRO and others in the Field series is ‘How can an intermedial assemblage generate de-anthropocentric performance?’
However, this creative manifestation maintains this core question while asking another complementary sub-question about the ontology of interdisciplinary form. Specifically, ‘Field-Canvas’ asks ‘Is the resulting artefact still a performance or rather simply performative?’ ‘Can the work transcend the notion of performance and should it?’ Additionally, and somewhat prosaically, ‘Why did I not activated the work with a QR link to the final product of ‘Field’ – White-card as I could have done?’ These may seem workaday questions of artistic process but they are central to the ontological status of the ‘body’ in the overall ‘Field’ work series, how it can be deprivileged in performance and if multiple mediations can trouble the body’s primacy in perception.

This inquiry sits adjacent and at times complementary to other artist’s works, such as P-Chih Huange, Henrik Olesen, Ja Rhim Lee, and Frikkie Eksteen, who all challenge anthropocentric positionality i.e. those who challenge the ‘Anthropocene’ (Crutzen et al., 2011) an unofficial unit of geological time which is driven ‘by…anthropocentrically structured powers geared for exploitation of biological environments and material ecologies’ (29).

New knowledge is manifest in the work as it materialises, performs and troubles the privilege of the body in contrast to the other materials in the composition. Thus, embodying the very notion of concerns of new materialism and post-humanism through performance. Other than manifesting the concerns of challenging the dominance of anthropocentric performance through a unique performative gesture, the work deepens the researcher’s inquiry by (as stated above) challenging the ontology of the performativity of the ‘still’ image itself. This engenders broader questions about the ontological status of performativity, forging a potential nexus between non-anthropocentric positionality, interdisciplinarity and intermediality (or as some would have it trans-materiality) in the researcher’s work.

This NRTO extends the researcher’s creative practice in as much as it is an essential transitional work in the ‘Field’ series. ‘Field-Canvas’ is unsuccessful - in as much as it does not answer comprehensively its concerns - rather it is a gesture that manifests a new interdisciplinary, trans-material holding space for the research. It’s transitionary status as such, is also its success as research - as it provokes new ontological and formal challenges for the researcher/artist. By exhibiting what can traditionally be seen as an ‘artefact’, as opposed to a ‘performance’ the NTRO has opened up and troubled a space for greater theoretical and methodological potential for the overall ‘Field’ series. Specifically, the work has inspired new manifestations for ‘materialising’ the research question for example ‘what if the first and last frame of the performance were materialised as artefacts – could the space between these artefact hold for the viewer/audience/percipient an imagined performance? Would this then also be a performance totally deprived of the anthropocentric and the material? This calls into mind the work of Salvatore Garau’s invisible statue “I Am” (2021) which is akin to (Borevitz, 2003: 3) position on form, that being ‘The work before interpretation is formless and produces in the viewer an anxiety which must be resolved by attribution… [it is] an anxiety that demands resolution by the assignment of significance’.

The work is significant to the field in as much as it is a clear transitional creative manifestation of the research inquiry which holds a main and sub-questions. To reiterate, the main being ‘How can an intermedial assemblage generate de-anthropocentric performance?’ the sub-questions being ‘Is the resulting artefact still a performance or rather simply performative?’ and ‘Can the work transcend the notion of performance and should it?’ The evidence rests (not unpredictably) partially in a subsequent NTRO work, generated from this new line of inquiry - the work entitled ‘Wounded Parties’ (2024) exhibited at the Resilience exhibition at St Andrew’s Hospital Toowoomba - which successfully combine the notion of Process Art in both artifact and performance. This work is directly attributable to the transitionary opportunities created by ‘Field-Canvas’ (2024) in exhibition.

There were no collaborators, no funding, prizes, accolades and or peer reviews of the work. However, ‘Field - Canvas’ (2024) was accepted into the UniSQ Staff and Student exhibition ‘Fill your Eyes’ (2024) curated by Rhi Johnson and Peta Berghofer, which demands a particular standard of peer engagement – with its intent of exhibiting and exchanging works among artists as part of its curatorial rationale. I can confirm that the research was exhibited amongst artists of high standing who have considerable bodies of work, for example Rhi Johnson, Kyle Jenkins, Stephen Spurrier, and Linda Clark, Carolyn Drought-Leblang, Scott Henman, Cara-Ann Simpson and Danish Quapoor (to name but a few).

References:
Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words (2d ed). Clarendon Press.
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321
Borevitz, B. (2003, Kune).
Borevitz, B. (2005) Matthew Barney and a Kline Bottle of Vaseline. Www.onetwothree.net/borevitz/text/essay (accessed 18th October 2005). [OneTwoThree]. Matthew Barney and a Kline Bottle of Vaseline. www.onetwothree.net/borevitz/text/essay
Carranza, N. (n.d.). Agency. Geneology. Retrieved April 24, 2018, from https://criticalposthumanism.net/
Crutzen, Paul. J. and Schwägerl, Christian. (2021). Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos (2011). Paul J. Crutzen and the Anthropocene: A New Epoch in Earth’s History, pp.141–144. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82202-6_12.Garau, S. (2021). “I Am” (lo Sono) [Invisible].
Sanzo, K. (2018, April 25). Https://criticalposthumanism.net/2018/04/25/. Geneology of the Posthuman. https://criticalposthumanism.net/2018/04/25/

Footnote: *. Here Barad takes her cue on the notion that “agency exists not as an influence of one pre-existing entity upon another but as an ‘intra-action’, a cooperative force that brings entangled materiality into being through their relationship” (Barad, 2007, cited in (Carranza, 2018

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