MAKING KIN

by
Jennifer Brant
BFA, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2001
B.Ed, University of British Columbia, 2005

A THESIS ESSAY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART+ DESIGN

2018

© Jennifer Brant, 2018

ABSTRACT
In this document, I outline the research, theory and practice that are the foundation of
my work with the more-than-human world. I draw on the theoretical discussions of what
constitutes a person, the inherent vitality of thing power and ideas about kinship and
multi-species survival to investigate how we might move towards a glimmer of polyontological possibility. The body of work described in this text is an attempt to
concurrently experience, facilitate and chronicle my interactions in material form
through the creation of objects that serve as both agents and archives. I utilize
ceremonial field studies that involve approaching the subject with openness to
whatever might transpire, and studio practices with materials that refer to a
homesteading vernacular. As a woman of both settler and Indigenous ancestry, I
explore my relationship to the more-than-human from a place that straddles, and
honours, different cultures and ontologies.
There are many ways to create kin, and in this paper I present several potential
avenues. Reflecting on the writings of Priscilla Stuckey, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway
and Zoe Todd, I propose that we need to adapt our approach to encounters with
human and non-human alike in order to be in solidarity with one another as we begin to
structure a collaborative response to our unknown future.

My research reflects a sensibility that believes in ethics, is concerned with our
relationship to nature, is socially oriented and seeks a kind of in-betweeness. To further
my understanding of how we might transform mythologies, language and definitions,
and to situate my practice within a thinking within a broader artistic and theoretical
context, I refer to contemporary artists centralizing relationships with the more-thanhuman world, including Rebecca Belmore, Marcus Coates and Tanya Willard.

ii

TABLE O F CO NTENTS

ABSTRACT.................................................................................................. ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................... iii

LIST OF FIGURES....................................................................................... iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................... v

QUOTATIONS........................................................................................... vi

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 1

SITUATE..................................................................................................... 2

TRANSMUTE: pre-thesis work................................................................... 5
thesis work......................................................................... 13

COLLABORATE......................................................................................... 18

REFLECT.................................................................................................... 31

WORKS CITED........................................................................................... 34

WORKS CONSULTED............................................................................... 33

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Family photograph, little Jennifer with fawn, 1971........................................2
Figure 2: Jennifer Brant, Civic Union I, 2016................................................................ 6
Figure 3: Jennifer Brant, Civic Union l (studio translation), 2016.................................. 6
Figure 4 & 5: Jennifer Brant, Details, Civic Union II, 2016............................................ 6
Figure 6: Jennifer Brant, impossible mending, 2017.....................................................7
Figure 7: Jennifer Brant, the impossibility of total knowledge, 2017............................9
Figure 8: Jennifer Brant, Detail, how to sustain a condition of radical
uncertainty, 2017......................................................................................................... 10
Figure 9: Jennifer Brant, Faultline: Long Bay to Boat Cove (mapping my
anxieties), 2017............................................................................................................ 11
Figure 10: Jennifer Brant, blue intervention no.2, 2017.....................…..................... 11
Figure 11: Jennifer Brant, work in progress – erratic rock stories, 2018...................... 15
Figure 12: Jennifer Brant, erratic rock stories: listening, 2018..................................... 15
Figure 13: Jennifer Brant, Detail, erratic rock stories: listening, 2018......................... 16
Figure 14: Jennifer Brant, standard notation of pacific wren song, 2018.................... 21
Figure 15: Jennifer Brant, bird conversation: wren, 2018............................................ 22
Figure 16: Jennifer Brant, braid I, 2017........................................................................ 25
Figure 17: Jennifer Brant, braid no. 8: Surrey/White Rock border, 2018...................... 26

iv

ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS

To my human kin:
My supervisor, Randy Lee Cutler, for her tough questions and deep understanding, and
the rest of my graduate committee, Ingrid Koenig, Trish Kelly and Jesse Birch, for their
time and consideration
My cohort, specifically Peter Sickert, Jess Portfleet and Fiona Moes Pel for their support
and generative conversations
My xʷɛʔɛt̓ay (Lasqueti Island) community, for holding space
My son, for showing me what commitment to practice looks like
My mother and grandmother, for the wonder and the trauma
My partner, there are no words

To my more-than-human kin:
My dog friends, Pippa and Gus, who teach me daily
Mama Fir, my backbone
The Salish Sea, who holds me
xʷɛʔɛt̓ay (Lasqueti Island), where I have the privilege of stewarding land
The unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and
səl̓ílwətaʔɬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, where I am a guest filled with love
and respect. Warrior up.

v

We need stories (and theories) that are just big enough to gather up the complexities
and keep the edges open and greedy for surprising new and old connections.
Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble

Knowing is a direct material engagement, a practice of intra-acting with the world as
part of the world in its dynamic material configuring, its ongoing articulation…Ethics is
about mattering, about taking account of the entangled materializations of which we
are a part, including new configurations, new configurations, new possibilities- even the
smallest cuts matter.

Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway

Kindness is a goddamn art.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost

vi

INTRO DUCTIO N

I am seven years old. My mother keeps bees in Langley. The path to the hives winds
through the dappled light of a deciduous forest. I always fall behind, distracted by the
softness of the moss under my hands or the sow bugs on the log or the sky. When we
arrive at the hives, the thrum resonates in my chest. I lean against the back of a hive, sit
very still as bees land on my bare legs then continue on their way.

*
My art practice is both provisional and contingent. It consists of listening, being
present, embodying, writing, researching and archiving. Making kin involves being
vulnerable and engaged, and an attitude of receptivity that is in sharp contrast to the
aloof irony characteristic of our current era. This thesis weaves my ongoing research
identifying ontologies that have the capacity to shift our relationship to the more-thanhuman1 and the unfolding of my methodological process, with contemplation of the
artwork itself. Throughout the text you will find questions, and while I might not be
able to answer them all, I consider ongoing inquiry integral to my art practice.

The document is organized by action. SITUATE describes my positionality, sharing
some of my background, the origins of my practice and key elements that inform my
making. TRANSMUTE AND COLLABORATE delineate my method and methodology.
Specifically, TRANSMUTE gives an overview of the work that led up to the thesis project
and paper, and chronicles my research into materiality, starting with pre-thesis work and
moving into thesis work at the end of the section. COLLABORATE illustrates my
investigation into collaboration and contamination and also describes thesis work. Both
TRANSMUTE and COLLABORATE include references to artists whose work has
resonated with me.
1

more-than-human is a term first coined by ecological philosopher David Abram in the mid1990’s as a way to talk about the natural world.

1

SITUATE

I have spent much of my life alone and in conversation with the natural world. I have
observed and contemplated, and quietly interacted with the more-than-human, the
beings – both animate and inanimate- with whom we share this world. I have archived
my relationships by collecting and making all manner of objects- from driftwood and
rocks to drawings and poems. I have been searching for a narrative that would help me
understand my place in the world, ultimately re-enacting and embodying many of
traditional stories learned through dress-up and imaginative play. The most significant
of these stories was the She-Wolf of Tsla-a-wat, where I transformed into a she-wolf and
raised a human cub (my brother). It was the wolf pelt, a sport kill of my father’s, which
secured the metamorphosis. I draped it over myself, with its head on my head and felt
the vibrancy of the pelt. The haptic experience of the power of the pelt, coupled with
the transmutational potential of narrative, were the original points of access to what
would become my art practice. I wanted to occupy this space, this liminal zone between
real and unseen, translating embodied experience and social dynamics into material
form.

Fig. 1. little Jennifer with fawn

2

I was born and raised on the West Coast, in ɬəʔamɛn (Tla’amin) territory and the
unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and
səl̓ílwətaʔɬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. I come from both settler and
Indigenous ancestry. My Cherokee and Quaker great-grandparents made their way
across the United States, settling in Alaska. This bloodline then mixed with Scottish,
English and Irish, and created a second generation Canadian, a newcomer and a guest.
My relationship to the coast is complex, formed by intimate interactions with specific
places and an ongoing resistance to capitalist and colonialist power structures that was
instilled by my mother, a lay midwife and activist.

My work is informed by the combined reality of living rurally and in the city, as well as
the transition between the two. Living off the grid half the time, I am acutely aware of
the need to manage resources, understand systems and cultivate and maintain kinship.
Returning to the city, my dependence of urban infrastructure heightens my feelings of
vulnerability and responsibility. Many of the materials I use reflect a homesteading or
craft vernacular, including lumber, beeswax, textiles, and ceramics. I utilize my skills as a
maker, repurposing found materials and shaping raw ones.

My meditative practice, pagan upbringing and Waldorf education have taught me to be
present and patient, have led me to trust my intuition and be cognizant of the agency
that exists in other beings. I have questions and concerns about how we interrelate and
how we inhabit our world. These push me to re-examine the western framework that
has formed contemporary society, to find the ideas that value connection and kinship,
and to work to recover what has been lost. Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who
introduced innovative social reforms at the beginning of the 20th century that included
the development of the Waldorf school curriculum, said “All existence is spirit; just as
ice is water, so matter is also spirit. Mineral, vegetable, animal or human – all are

3

condensed form of spirit” 2. Steiner challenged many dominant institutions of his time
and aspired, through his educational philosophy, to create freethinking human beings. I
am fortunate to have been exposed to this variation of western thought, and the
inherent centrality of narrative that exists within Waldorf education. As a result, I choose
to situate myself in a different knowledge set, one that has room for relationship, spirit,
will and kinship.

When I began the MFA program, my art practice was centred around meditative mark
making on textiles and ceramics, and exploring and recording the agency of water
through dyeing processes. The past two years have resulted in a shift in my way of
working and the direction of the research for this thesis. Theory plays a much more
significant role, and the work that is the most inspirational often lands in an interstitial
zone between disciplines or ontologies. This change in direction reflects a renewed
relationship with materials, ideas, spaces and collaborators and careful attention to the
seen and unseen forces so relevant to my childhood experiences. In order to visit with
the beings and forces that make up the more-than-human world, it is important to
extend consciousness and sensory awareness3 outward as well as inward. As is
necessary with any practice that rubs up against the unseen, I suspend disbelief and
move away from the need for some kind of empirical, infallible evidence to a receptivity
that allows for knowing that is subtle and embodied. This awareness also makes room
for narrative to emerge that is guided by intuition and imagination and makes
connections between the inhabitants of the human and more-than-human world. My
positionality will be woven into this text through referencing the influence of early
2

Steiner, Rudolf, A. R. Meuss, and Urs Dietler. True Knowledge of the Christ : Theosophy and
Rosicrucianism - the Gospel of John(12)
3

Sensory awareness includes the common five senses plus the additional seven proposed by
Rudolf Steiner. They are divided into three groups; those senses that pertain to the body –
touch, life, movement and balance; those that pertain to the external world –smell, sight, taste
and temperature and those that pertain to the immaterial –hearing, speech, thought and ego.
This information comes from oral lectures given during Waldorf teacher training.

4

archival practices as a means of recording relationship with these beings and the haptic
power and vibrant materiality of objects. In addition, the importance of a composite
ontology serves to situate my thinking within a broader artistic and theoretical context.

TRANSM UTE

There are several waypoints during the program that served to guide the practice that
would become the focus of my MFA work. The seed of my thesis lay in the furtive4
interventions and ephemeral pieces that took place in marginalized5 spaces. The first
key point occurred early on, when I rediscovered the importance of connecting with
site. Concurrent to this development was the recognition of object-making as a means
to record the sensory information obtained during these visits. The challenge became
how to create a relationship between the interventions that were left in the location,
and the installations that developed in the studio or gallery. Civic Union I (figs. 2 & 3),
consisted of visiting the site, returning to the studio to fabricate the objects and placing
them back in the landscape. I then accurately mapped and indexed the exterior work in
order to translate the intervention into an inside installation. As the series continued,
the resulting objects took on a museological quality, as seen in Civic Union II (figs. 4 &
5).

4

A furtive act can be identified by “its intentionality, its use of language and myth-making, its
quality of resistance, its specificity to the site in which it takes place, and (…) by the fact it is
done without permission” (Ritter 10)
Ritter, Kathleen. How to Recognize a Furtive Practice: A User’s Guide
5

marginal: of, relating to, or situated at a margin or border; not of central importance;
occupying the borderland of a relatively stable territorial or cultural area; located at the fringe of
consciousness. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marginal

5

Fig. 2 & 3. Civic Union I / site specific material intervention with studio translation /
porcelain, thread, pins / Dimensions variable / 2016 / photos: Jennifer Brant

Fig. 4 & 5. Detail / Civic Union II / porcelain, found root, gold leaf, plywood, nails /
Dimensions variable / 2016 / photos: Jennifer Brant

This was significant because it became clear the objects informed one another, and at
the same time, the distance that occurred through organization and categorization led
to my questioning what was at stake for me. What means were there to deepen the
relationships to the places and entities I was visiting? What theories and ontologies
centralized the relationship to both the more-than-human and the vibrancy of objects?

6

The final waypoint in my pre-thesis work involved a re-examination of imbuing objects
with vitality. Up until this point, I would have confidently said that I was accessing the
sensory information gathered while out in the world and transmuting it into the objects
through handwork. However, it was the embodied experience of a near-fatal boat
accident, and the subsequent recovery facilitated by intuitive making through the
artwork impossible mending (fig. 6), that illuminated the degree to which I had to feel
experiences in my body in order to successfully transfer them into made objects. I
understood in a new way that my connection to body and hands is essential to research
and production and that my body is both an archive and a facilitator. Several questions
arose as a direct result of this breakthrough. How can embodied experience be
translated into an object? How do the objects we interact with transform us and in what
ways do objects change each other?

Fig. 6. impossible mending / cotton fabric, wax, thread, pins / Dimensions variable / 2017 /
photo: Jennifer Brant

7

I was initially drawn to the work of author Jane Bennett. In her book Vibrant Matter: A
Political Ecology of Things, Bennett describes an encounter she has with several
disparate objects where she experiences an “energetic vitality”6. She refers to a kind of
wildness, that she calls uncanny, which transpires when an assemblage of objects
interact with one another. In order for objects to shift into things, replete with thingpower, Bennett asserts that we must bring sensory and intuitive openness to our
encounters. We are all actants7 in these situations, whether human or not. When I
brought my attention to the objects in my studio in the way Bennett described, they
began to converse with one another in unexpected ways. In the installation the
impossibility of total knowledge (fig. 7), I expanded on impossible mending in order to
explore embodied and epigenetically transferred anxiety using textiles, objects, and
drawing. The interaction between the elements in the installation was dynamic, and
feedback from colleagues and viewers alike confirmed the potency of the assemblage8.
I continued to work with these ideas for the interim thesis show, which culminated in the
installation, how to sustain a condition of radical uncertainty (fig. 8) and the
amalgamation of drawing and textiles into one artwork. The quilt pattern was based on
a map of my anxieties, similar to what I had drawn on the wall, and was imbued with the
energetic residue of meditative stitching as well as vivid materiality of its thing-power.

6

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant matter: A Political Ecology of Things
a term coined by Bruno Latour, whose actor-network theory suggests that a rhizomatic
framework is formed from the relationships between humans and non-humans within a social
world. Within this world, actants can be described as the source of any action. They can be
human or not human, have agency and contribute to relations
7

8

assemblage refers to the collection of objects in the installation as well as the theories of
Manual DeLanda, who posits that inorganic matter has self-organizational abilities.

8

While Bennett’s articulation of the relationship between objects was encouraging, it
neglected other ontologies that have never lost the ability to recognize relations. Surely
there was a way to move from a distinctly Western conceptualization towards a glimmer
of poly-ontological possibility or even to the centralizing of indigenous ontology. This is
important to me personally because of my ancestry and friendships, but also because I
feel it is essential that we do everything we can to facilitate widespread decolonization.
It makes sense to pay close attention to the experience and knowledge of those who
have never severed their connection with the natural world.

Fig. 7. the impossibility of total knowledge / cotton and silk fabric, wax, found wood, pencil
crayon, paint / Dimensions variable / 2017 / photo: Jennifer Brant

9

Fig. 8. Detail, how to sustain a condition of radical uncertainty / cotton and linen fabric, thread,
batting, copper pins / Dimensions variable / 2017 / photo: Jennifer Brant

Philosopher Priscilla Stuckey was the first author I discovered that referenced
indigenous scholarship. She advocates for broadening the definition of the term
“person”. In her article Being Known by a Birch Tree: Animist Refigurings of Western
Epistemology Stuckey posits an animist framework that extends the definition to include
beings that would generally be considered inanimate.

Persons are volitional, relational, cultural and social beings. They demonstrate
intentionality and agency with varying degrees of autonomy and freedom.
Persons are those who relate, and especially those who communicate. Persons
may be spoken with. Objects, by contrast, are usually spoken about.9

9

Stuckey, Priscilla. On being known by a Birch Tree. (190)

10

Persons may be found in any manner of material form; the stuff that they are made of
does not determine their personhood. What defines a person is whether or not they
engage in relationship. Stuckey’s animist framework proposes that persons can know us
as we know them. As my practice is informed by paying attention and making room for
knowing, this theory led me to further explore material vibrancy coupled with coming to
know specific landmarks in my immediate environment.

Fig. 9. Faultline… /clay slip / 2017 /

Fig. 10. blue intervention no.2 / mineral

photo: Jennifer Brant

pigment for colouring soap / 2017 /
photo: Jennifer Brant

For Faultline: Long Bay to Boat Cove (mapping my anxieties) (fig.9), I used clay slip to
demarcate a fault line that runs roughly across the middle of the island. The intention of
the intervention was two-fold; I wanted to engage with an active geological formation
while acknowledging and highlighting it as a source of anxiety. With blue intervention
no.1 (fig.10), I contemplated the nature of potholes, in particular the way they force us
to slow down and pay attention. By making the holes blue, I attempted to emphasize
their nature and suggest a further slowing down. While the animacy of a pothole is
open for debate, it is a phenomenon that shifts our behaviour, causing us to act in a

11

particular way. In that sense, we are in relationship with it and we are known to each
other.

Both potholes and faultlines are part of the landscape, and these works, when
combined with my earlier acts of tenderness, point to my desire to know not only the
entities that live in and on the land but the land itself. Indigenous scholar Zoe Todd,
writing for the anthology Art in the Anthropocene, references the work of
Haudenosaudee and Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts. Watts describes the land as a
thinking, living entity from which all other beings, human and non-human alike, acquire
their means of operating in the world. The land is the source; it is that from which all
thoughts and actions rise. Of particular note, and one that resonates with me, is Watts’
suggestion that we “think of agency as being tied to spirit, and (as) spirit exists in all
things, all things have agency”10. Watts rejects Latour’s term actant, as it limits the
agency of the non-human to their interaction with humans. Todd goes on to assert that
materials are “enlivened with will, knowing and sentience”11 (248). This ontology is
familiar, overlapping with both my Waldorf education and my pagan upbringing, and is
a reflection of my experience of the world. It serves as a welcome framework for what I
am currently producing for the MFA graduate exhibition, which will be discussed for the
remainder of the document. It is also a pre-cursor for collaboration with the more-thanhuman. Can an artistic approach that reflects a poly-ontology allow for what has
otherwise been called a hybrid or interdisciplinary12 practice?

Turpin, Etienne, and Heather Davis. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics,
Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. (46)
10

11

Ibid. (248)
hybrid or interdisciplinary practice refers to a contemporary practice that dissolves boundaries
between disciplines such as art and science or art and technology in order to research and
articulate emerging concepts
12

12

THESIS WORK

In the fall of 2017, I participated in a themed residency in Wexford County, Ireland. This
time abroad was incredibly generative and many of the ideas that have become my
thesis project emerged or were further developed during this time. It was here that I
began the acts of attention that led to braiding and listening, as well as the mapping of
energetic relationships. I was diligent in my approach, making an offering with each
interaction and drawing on the land rituals I had practiced for decades. Concurrently, I
researched stories and histories, as well as the names of unfamiliar plants and the make
up of the rock and soil beneath my feet.

Before my residency, I spent a week in Iceland and my time there was marked by
immersion in the vibrancy of the geology. It was there that I began to listen to rocks and
boulders, leaning in close and pressing my ear against their craggy surface. The
Huldufólk (hidden folk) of Iceland are believed to live in rocks, and unlike most Western
folk tales that have been relegated to fairy tale status, a significant portion of the
Icelandic population continue believe the Huldufólk exist. This cultural openness to the
more-than-human made investigations into and conversations with geological entities
much easier. I began to think about erratic boulders13, and wondered about the stories
they hold. Erratics are witnesses and sentinels; by bringing our attention to what they
have seen, we might be able to connect to a vast repository of knowledge. What
journey has this rock taken? What has it seen? What physical object could I create that
might be a material intermediary between the boulder and myself? What kind of device
could act as an interface and guide my listening?

13

an erratic is a rock or boulder that differs from the surrounding rock and is believed to
have travelled and been deposited through glacial action.

13

I refined my method of listening upon returning to Canada. I began working on erratic
rock stories: listening. I visited with erratic rocks located in Southwestern British
Columbia and on Vancouver Island. These boulders are geologically out of place. They
have become landscape artifacts because they are not where they are supposed be;
they are travelers. For this particular piece, I made three listening devices, specifically
formed to fit three erratic boulders: one in Coquitlam, one on Hollyburn Mountain and
one in Abbotsford. I thought about one of the most intimate of listening acts, finding
the heartbeat of a fetus, and I loosely modeled the device on the Pinard horn14,
fashioning a cone-shaped device by casting clay slip in a plaster mould. After making an
impression of an area of the boulder with silicone putty, I returned to the studio and
created a second mould for the interface between boulder and device that I cast in
beeswax. While it might seem like a lot of work for each boulder, I want to emphasize
that I am approaching individual boulders to listen to their specific stories. I consider
the element of care I bring when I spend this much time with an erratic to be important
to the process. Clay and beeswax are materials that I repeatedly use in my practice
both due to their malleability and capacity for taking on specific shapes and the vitality
that resonates from them. They are non-toxic materials that reflect the homesteading
vernacular I referenced earlier in the paper. The cast interfaces fit perfectly against the
surface of the boulder. The devices measured nine inches in length, with the large end
about seven inches in diameter. When they were used in situ, they were held in the
hand. In the gallery, two sat on a wooden stand located on a shelf, and one was in a felt
holder, ready to go into the field (fig.12). While in situ, the devices served to bring the
participant in proximity to the boulder and acted as an invitation to engage in listening.
In the gallery, their materiality held the residue of the encounter and the faint whisper
of the boulder’s story.

14

a stethoscope used to hear the fetal heartbeat

14

Fig. 11. experimentation– erratic rock stories: listening / clay prototype, preliminary listening /
2018 / photo: Ian Giles

Fig. 12. erratic rock stories: listening / clay, beeswax, wood, felt, linen /
Dimensions variable / 2018 / photo: Jennifer Brant

15

Fig. 13. detail - erratic rock stories: listening / clay, beeswax, wood, felt, linen / 2018 /
photo: Jennifer Brant

Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore has also facilitated listening, though she has
focused on specific sites. In her work for LandMarks 2017 she created Wave Sounds, a
series affecting sculptures that operate as amplifiers for four environments: Banff
National Park, Pukaskwa National Park, Georgian Bay Islands National Park, and Gros
Morne National Park. Each unique shape emulates the surface of a rock and is designed
to fit into the landscape; they “encourage us to hear and consider the land and our
relationship to the land” (LandMarks 2017 website). Belmore’s interest in listening, her
concern for the future of all people, and her desire to inspire communication and
cooperation, all the while directing an unflinching and critical gaze at colonial
institutions, serve as “an invitation for human cognition to move across the same
boundaries that stone and water traverse with ease”.15
15

Horton, Jessica L. and Janet Catherine Berlo. Beyond the Mirror: Indigenous Ecologies and
‘New Materialism’ in Contemporary Art. (28)

16

Since stones are grammatically animate, I once asked an old man: Are all the stones we
see about us here alive? He reflected a long while and then replied,
‘No, but some are.’
Anthropologist Irving Hallowell, 196016

When I listen, I dissolve boundaries by ingesting bits of another’s story. I have the
opportunity become a witness and ally to human and more-than-human alike. While
Belmore is asking the question “do we take sound for granted?” I am interested in what
can transpire when I bring my full attention to the boulder that is in front of me. I am
also interested in the power of the listening device to hold the energy of the encounter.
I am reminded of the words of Shawn Wilson, in his book Research is Ceremony:
Indigenous Research Methods. There he says, “the distance or relationship between us
and the environment is sacred, and so you do ceremonies to bridge that space or
distance”.17 Whether we are working with the bigger landscape or individual elements
within it, bridging space is much like making kin, as will be discussed later in the
document; it requires patience and presence. If we are to bridge the distance between
ourselves and the more-than-human world, the first step is to bring our attention to that
which is in front of us; we need an entrance point, a set of circumstances or objects that
lend themselves to a different way of experiencing, interacting and understanding. I see
my work as that entrance point. The ability to expand the definition of person and
relate differently to beings previously considered inanimate is a precursor to
collaboration, and by extension, making kin. We have the capacity to understand and
open up to the way others are in the world. We have imagination and compassion, both
of which are tools that can give access to the multitude of perspectives, and allow us to
embody them.

16
17

Hallowell, A Irving. Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View (24)
Wilson, Shawn. Research is Ceremony : Indigenous Research Methods. (87)

17

COLLABORATE

When two or more entities work together, they are collaborating. We collaborate with
earthworms to make compost, yeasts to make bread, molds to make cheese and with
the microbiota in our gut to support our immune and hormonal functioning. In our
anthropocentric world, these constant collaborations are often overlooked, subsumed
into the machinations of human activity and self-importance. We need only to look to
our own bodies to understand that we are created as much from bacteria and microbes
as we are from cells. We are already an interdependent species; our emotional states,
thinking and even our ability to connect with our community are all affected, and often
directly linked, to our micrbiome. Given the growing neuroscientific evidence on the
connection between our gut and how we think, and increasing feelings of isolation and
disconnect from each other and place, safeguarding the collaboration between bacteria
and ourselves seems prudent.

Collaboration has become a contemporary catch phrase, particularly in business where
it is heralded as a way to increase productivity and efficiency. However, if we were to
examine collaboration using the framework of our relationship with our microbiome, we
would find that a completely different set of values emerge. It is this relationship I have
aimed to invoke for the production of my thesis project. I would like to lead into my
work by introducing the Dark Mountain Project as their manifesto and collaborative
publications and events served as a catalyst for my thinking and making. Born out of
two years of conversations between writers Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, the Dark
Mountain Project is an organization whose aim is to give voice to what they describe as
“uncivilized” writers, artists, musicians and other creatives. Uncivilized is a word that is
being used more frequently to describe those who choose not to subscribe to the
myths of progress and nature currently held by capitalist society. The relevance of the
Dark Mountain Project is two-fold. Firstly, the organization itself is collaborative and all
projects are undertaken and supported by a rhizomatic contingent of individuals.

18

Secondly, they are committed to challenging the stories that keep us separate from
“nature”. At the core of their manifesto is a call for alternatives to the current paradigm.
They want to change how we relate to, and work with, the more-than-human. They are
an example of how we might begin to structure a collaborative response to our
unknown future.

Whether it is possible to disrupt the status quo and reimagine our relationships in time
to interrupt the course we are on remains to be seen, as it will require a committed
ontological shift. However, we might be able to facilitate this transition by first
examining what is ‘human’ in philosophical terms. Both Donna Haraway and Rosi
Braidotti occupy nodes on a metaphysical rhizome, and they describe and carefully
deconstruct dominant systems of thought. Underlying much of my work is a desire to
interrupt systems in order to consider and make room for other ones. Making kin is
rhizomatic; it is the development of a network, which is synonymous with a system. To
network means to make connections and interact, a precursor to collaboration.

The impetus for bird conversation: wren came from the intersection of the theoretical
investigations of posthumanist and feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti and the simple
ritual of sitting outside and listening to birdsong. In her text Nomadic Subjects:
Embodiment and Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory Braidotti asked whether
human differences – ethnic, gender, or cultural – can be understood outside the
constructions of binaries and hierarchies. Most recently, she has taken this questioning
further to include non-human entities. She suggests that the post-human subject is
“materially embedded, multi-layered, a nomadic entity, and engaged in inter-relations
with human and non-human agents” (Braidotti, web). How can we facilitate, in
Braidotti’s words, “a downsizing of human arrogance coupled with an
acknowledgement of solidarity with multiple others?” (Braidotti, web). If we do not
“downsize our human arrogance” we will not be able to relate to other beings. It is
impossible to bridge a gap and acknowledge or centralize other ontologies if we

19

continue to consider our species as superior to others. I chose to embody this
downsizing by engaging with the vulnerability I feel while singing and using my own
voice to attempt to communicate with a pacific wren. Given the studies showing the
similarities between the way young humans and young songbirds learn to vocalize,
there are clearly commonalities in how we make sound. That does not guarantee
understanding, though, and if communication between humans is challenging, would
communication between such different species as humans and birds even be possible?
Was it possible to sing the song in a way that a wren would understand? If nothing else,
would the wren recognize my intention? Solidarity is rich territory for developing
collaborative strategies. It is synonymous with consensus and like-mindedness, and
coming from this place, collaboration seems a natural evolution.

The work consisted of slowing down the wren’s song to a speed that was possible to
sing and having a composer transcribe it into standard notation (fig.14). I started
practicing the song, recorded, sped it up and played it in the adjacent Douglas fir
forest. I was interested in the way emotion is conveyed through sound, specifically
song, by birds and humans alike. In what ways might this music, this art, allow the
animal in me to meet the animal that is the wren? What would be lost in translation?

At the same time, I had revisited R. Murray Schaeffer deeply affecting choral work,
Snowforms. Schaeffer used non-standard notation, and the score reads like a musical
line drawing. Exploring whether there was a way of notating that would more accurately
describe the spirit of the wren’s song became an important part of the piece. I was
curious about what other information might be revealed in a different form of the score.

20

Fig. 14. standard notation of bird conversation: wren

In order for the experience of the birdsong to be an intimate one, I built a blind that
encapsulated the head and torso of the viewer. The blind was constructed from cedar
and pine and lined with a felt that was made of leftover fabric scraps, much like what a
bird might collect for a nest. The song was made audible through triggering a motionactivated speaker set inside the blind, behind the felt. One opening in the blind framed
the score, which was placed on an adjacent wall (fig.15).

21

Fig. 15. bird conversation: wren / cedar, pine, felt, audio of artist singing birdsong,
score / Dimensions variable / 2018 / photo: Jennifer Brant

There are many artists who have utilized or found inspiration in birdsong. In his work for
the exhibition Voicing, presented locally at the New Media Gallery in New Westminster
last fall, British artist Marcus Coates installed a work with a theme and a method of
production similar to mine, though far more elaborate. With Dawn Chorus, Coates
created an immersive installation involving sound and video in which the recorded
birdsong of fourteen birds singing together at dawn is slowed down to a drone and
given to amateur singers to sing. They were filmed singing their part at dawn and the
film was the sped up until the singers sound like birds. Coates is particularly interested
in the exploration of the origins of human language and voice in birdsong, and many of

22

his other projects reflect our shared sincere desire to communicate and establish
relationship with the more-than-human.

The collaborator series braid came directly from time spent at the residency in Ireland.
The research I was doing concerned relationships to the environment, and the objects
and elements found therein. The folklore and traditions enmeshed in Irish culture
revealed a profound respect for nature. The animation and personification of geological
formations and natural phenomena served as a way of explaining and relating to the
natural world as kin. I started imagining what acts of tenderness could I perform that
might make kin.

There are several theoretical approaches to making and maintaining kin. In Staying with
the Trouble, Donna Haraway argues for tapping into the tentacular18 powers and forces
that are within reach, and making kin, not just amongst humans but also with all earthly
inhabitants, in order for some of us to have chance of surviving.
Maybe, but only maybe, and only with intense commitment and collaborative
work and play with other terrans, flourishing for rich multispecies assemblages
that include people will be possible.19
She articulates several important questions relating to the implications of kinship,
including “to whom are we responsible?“20 and “what must be cut and what must be
tied if multi-species flourishing on earth, including human and other-than-human beings
in kinship, are to have a chance?”21. She looks to several prominent thinkers, including
philosopher Vinciane Despret, to provide models for our behaviour. Despret is
18

Tentacular, from the Latin tentaculum or tentare which means to feel, to try. Haraway
uses this term to describe a type of being, and of thinking that is interconnected and
responsive, like mycelium, but also like networks.
19

Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble : Making Kin in the Chthulucene. (101)
Ibid. (24)
21
Ibid. (24)
20

23

committed to approaching her interactions with politeness. She is open to “the
possibility that surprises are in store, that something interesting is about to happen, but
only if one cultivates the virtue of letting those that one visits intra-actively shape what
occurs “22Like Braidotti, Despret is interested in stepping outside the construction of
hierarchies in order to reveal more subtle behaviours. She approaches her research by
asking what is it that matters to the subject of her observation. Snap judgments and
hierarchical organizing are expedient. Perfectly in line with capitalism, a hierarchical
view keeps us blind to all but that which directly serves or subordinates us, an
unsustainable binary with no room to contemplate how we can interrelate, or the subtle,
mutual benefits of that kind of knowing.

While I was contemplating what both Haraway and Despret were positing, and
considering practical ways that I could apply their strategies for developing kinship, I
was also hiking in the hills that rose up behind the residency studio. The braid series
began when I came across a section of land that had been logged and then
abandoned. It was filled with stumps, and in between were gorse bushes and long
golden grass. The devastation of the landscape evoked strong feelings of despondence
and a desire to engage kindly. The act of braiding is often one of tenderness when
practiced between humans and while braiding occurs as a pattern in the natural world,
rivers and blood circulation being prime examples, I was focusing on braiding as a
human act, one that crosses cultures. The resulting french braid wove in and out of the
debris.

22

Ibid. (127)

24

Fig. 16. braid I / video still / 2017 /

Other braids followed, and ultimately led to the video braid no. 8: Surrey/White Rock
border (fig. 17), which was a part of the thesis exhibition. It began with a pair of hands
coming into view in the centre of the frame and dividing long grass into three sections.
The hands started to french braid the grass, went into slow motion, emphasizing the
movements of the hands and grass, returned to normal speed at the end before it
looped. There was no sound and the video was recorded from the braider’s point of
view. During the exhibition, the video was displayed on a 42” monitor housed in an
angular, free-standing wall. A beeswax-coated piece of glass sat in front of the monitor,
with the wax scraped away in places, revealing some areas of the image more clearly.

25

I chose the slow movement of the video and the cloudy surface to articulate the dreamlike quality of the encounter.

Fig. 17. braid no. 8: Surrey/White Rock border / video, cedar, glass, beeswax /
Dimensions variable / 2018 / photo: Jennifer Brant

Several questions have arisen as a result of this project. What happens when we try to
extend human acts of tenderness to the more-than-human? Are they translatable or
even welcome? Can intention be communicated energetically? Can permission? As I
made my interventions, I had very clear sensations in every place I considered braiding.

26

There were several places I did not braid because I felt uncomfortable. I chose to
interpret this as the agency of the grass, informing me my actions were not welcome.
Perhaps braiding might be seen as a way of interfering with the landscape, of
cultivating and domesticating, which serves to complicate complicates the artwork.

As part of the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project, artist and curator Tania Willard
chose to bring together several materials with intention of nurturing the environment.
Willard, who is from Secwépemc Nation in the interior of British Columbia, has
articulated the multi-layered relationships, histories and uses that occur in Stanley Park,
the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and
səl̓ílwətaʔɬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations through her piece Entwined. Using
materials from the park such as cedar, hemlock and alder combined with wool silver,
she constucted a 15-foot long braid.

The multi-strand intervention told an interwoven story; madder root used to dye the
wool red was also used to dye the red coats of the British soldiers, the wool itself spoke
to the shared knowledge between peoples, and the oyster shell buttons referred to the
large midden at Lumberman’s Arch, one that demonstrates the long history of First
Nations use. Willard summarizes her intentions beautifully in her artist’s statement:
In Entwined, I am attempting to bring it all together: ocean, forest, indigenous
plant and animal life, the recognition of indigenous lands, knowledge and place,
and a sense of wonder and meditation on our place within that, our place in the
story ecology.23
There is an overlap of material sensibilities and physical process in our work, as well as
in the way we respectfully approach the spaces in which we are working. Despite this, I
acknowledge that the implications of our work are different; Willard, as an Indigenous
23

http://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/stanley-park-environmental-art-project.aspx

27

woman, is able to speak to aspects of working with relations that I, as a woman of
mixed ancestry with no inherited stories, cannot. The read on my work will, rightfully, be
different; I lay no claim to Indigenous teachings. I attempt to articulate my relationship
to the more-than-human from a place that straddles, and honours, different cultures
and ontologies.
I am committed to being present in a way that leaves space for the emergence of
something new, something unanticipated. I approach my encounters with tenderness,
which, while more one-sided than intimacy, has the potential to become intimacy. By
creating objects that serve as both agents and/or archives, I try to concurrently
experience, facilitate and chronicle my interactions in material form. What are the tools I
need to detect intimacy between the more-than-human and myself? Is intention
enough? Can failure be generative? In what ways can it highlight our
anthropocentricity? Make us vulnerable? Open us up to the possibility of connection
and contamination? These questions arise in relation to most of my work but in slightly
different ways from project to project. In erratic rock stories: listening, my tool is a
listening device, constructed to interface with a specific boulder. What I or anybody
else will hear is unpredictable and herein lays the magic; if we can be open to what
might emerge, then something inevitably will. In bird conversation: wren there is a
good chance that my version of birdsong will fail to resonate with the birds that hear it.
The possibility that I will not be understood accentuates the fallibility of language, all
language, and highlights vulnerability of communication.

Another way of understanding what happens when we meet another could come in the
form of contamination. A word commonly associated with the spread of pathogens and
environmental disaster, contamination can be enlivened and repurposed in order to
articulate how we affect one another. While alive, we borrow elements and atoms from
the universe and share the air we breathe, examples of fundamental, biological ways we
interact. Anthropology professor Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing writes at length about the

28

importance of moving away from the idea that we are self-contained, independent
individuals, untouched by others. While collaboration sees us working together,
contamination leaves us affected by our encounters, changed in unanticipated ways.
Through investigating the commodity chain of the Matsutake mushroom, Tsing reveals
a cast of characters from fungal to human that collaborate, and contaminate, in
capitalist ruins.

When I sprain my ankle, a stout stick may help me walk, and I enlist its
assistance. I am now an encounter in motion, a woman-and-stick. It is hard for
me to think of any challenge I might face without soliciting the assistance of
others, human and not human24.

This simple collaboration with the more-than-human demonstrates the extent to which
we cannot move through this world alone. It also offers an opportunity to reframe the
way we look at those objects and beings with which we have daily encounters. Within
the context of my MFA work, contamination in ongoing; each time I visit an erratic, for
example, I become woman-and-listening-device-and boulder, open to whatever that
encounter will bring. Tsing’s work proposes that there are no simple answers to the
precarious situation we are in, as we continue to subscribe to systems of thought and
capital accumulation that are destroying the earth, but it is the very messiness of
making together, of encounters and contamination, that point to the chance for
survival.

As a final thought regarding how we might change our relationship to the natural world,
botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer suggests the word “ki” as a substitute for “it”, with “kin”
as the plural.

24

Tsing, Anna L. The Mushroom at the End of the World : On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist
Ruins. (29)

29

Make no mistake: “ki” and “kin” are revolutionary pronouns. Words have power
to shape our thoughts and our actions. On behalf of the living world, let us learn
the grammar of animacy. Let us speak of the beings of Earth as the “kin” they
are25.
This expanded definition of kin is an important example of how language can be a tool
to transform culture and holds potential for shifting our capacity to collaborate. To what
extent does an artistic practice have responsibility in shaping culture? And in what ways
is a materially or object-based practice uniquely suited to expanding our definitions of
kin?

Many of the questions that have come out my research reflect a sensibility that is
concerned with our relationship to nature, believes in ethics, is socially oriented and
seeks a kind of in-betweeness. The transformation of mythologies, language and
definitions requires a sincerity and commitment that can only be realized in a culture
that is interested in countering disengagement and cynicism with open, collaborative
and real engagement. Poly-ontology, with its expansive definition of what constitutes
reality, or realities, and recognition of the capabilities of non-human entities to act
could be essential to collaborating and, in fact, to surviving, what is coming toward us
from the future.

25

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth/alternative-grammar-a-new-languageof-kinship

30

REFLECT

The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
from the Speed of Darkness by Muriel Rukeyser

The past two years have facilitated my engagement with my practice in ways I had not
imagined, through deepening my theoretical and material relationships as well as
forcing me to find ways of clearly articulating the nature of my work. What began as
furtive explorations into marginalized spaces overlapping with complicated emotional
states has evolved into a poignant practice of making kin with the more-than-human
world. That reconnection with a sacred and potent liminal space first experienced in
childhood, now steeped with social, political and environmental concerns and directed
by a deep well of compassion, has given rise to a new way of finding relevance in my
practice. I see my work as a bridging practice, interrupting the viewer’s expectations,
sometimes with delight and wonder, other times with a more somber? tone in order to
find ways to probe the status quo. Providing opportunities for the audience to ponder,
to engage with an object that serves as an archive of an interaction between the morethan-human world and myself or to participate in the ceremonial fieldwork that lies at
the heart of the work I did during this MFA served to ask questions about how we relate
to an expanded understanding of kin, whatever form they may take. Within a gallery
setting, the archival or “nature museum” quality has the potential to reach people who
do not generally contemplate these relationships. The fieldwork could be considered a
chance to show up and invite the unexpected. It is an opportunity to develop a
relationship with a place or someone in the more-than-human-world that is different
than the ways in which we commonly assign significance. So often our thoughts about
the more-than-human-world our tied to our inter-human activities; our genus loci or
sense of place is tied to memories of, or experiences with, other humans . When we are
presented with a situation outside of that framework, where we are being asked to
consider the being that is in front of as a person separate from any preconceived

31

notions we might have. In part, the work attempts to facilitate the creation of a
momentary human, more-than-human and an object/interface hybrid where each
comes away changed, even ever so slightly, by the encounter.

The vast majority of questions and feedback I have received during this final stage of
the MFA have been rich and generous. Having the opportunity to witness what lines of
inquiry were prompted by my thesis work, and then be able to speak to them, was a
gift. The process revealed the areas where my work can be pushed, where it is
inconsistent, where it accomplishes what I set out to do and the places where it
intersects with other artists, both historical and contemporary. It became clear that I
take my facility with materials for granted and the call for me to both better describe my
material choices and be more explicit about how I make objects have instigated a more
stringent examination of my embodied knowledge. The defense was a generative,
thoughtful, deeply affecting experience and the calibre of questions and the generosity
of my committee were humbling. I feel excited about taking the work forward and to
continue speaking and writing. The questions about deep time and parallels between
an animist worldview and the discoveries of quantum physics, where matter is
movement rather than a thing, have expanded my research and are propelling me
towards what comes next.

32

W O RKS CITED
Barad, Karen M. Meeting the Universe Halfway : Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of things. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2010. Print
Braidotti, Rosi. Memoirs of a Posthumanist. Tanner Lecture series: Yale University, 2017.
Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjxelMWLGCo Accessed April 5, 2018
Hallowell, A. Irving. Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1960, Print.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble : Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham:
Duke University Press, 2016. Print.
Horton, Jessica L. and Janet Catherine Berlo. Beyond the Mirror: Indigenous Ecologies
and ‘New Materialism’ in Contemporary Art. Third Text 27.1 (2013): 17-28. PDF
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge,
and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Nature needs a new pronoun: to stop the age of extinction, let’s
start by ditching “it”. Web. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-withearth/alternative-grammar-a-new-language-of-kinship. Accessed February 16, 2018

Rashidi, Ingrid Halland Poly-ontological thinking in the Anthropocene. Web.
http://www.backtothesustainablefuture.net/multiple-realities-and-radical-anthropology/
Accessed May 2, 2018

33

Ritter, Kathleen. How to Recognize a Furtive Practice. Lieu et non-lieux de art l’actuel,
Les éditions Esse, Montrèal, 2005
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. This Accident of Being Lost : songs and stories.
Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Press, 2017. Print

Steiner, Rudolf, A. R. Meuss, and Urs Dietler. True knowledge of the Christ : Theosophy
and Rosicrucianism - the Gospel of John. Forest Row England: Rudolf Steiner Press,
2015. Print.

Stuckey, Priscilla. On being known by a Birch Tree. London: Equinox Publishing, 2010.
PDF.
Tsing, Anna L. The Mushroom at the End of the World : On the Possibility of Life in
Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Print.

Turpin, Etienne, and Heather Davis. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among
Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. s.l.s.l: Open Humanities Press,
2015. Print.

Wilson, Shawn. Research is Ceremony : Indigenous research methods. Black Point, N.S:
Fernwood Pub, 2008. Print.
http://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/stanley-park-environmental-artproject.aspx
Dark Mountain Project Blog. Web. http://dark-mountain.net/blog/ Accessed April 15,
2018

34

W O RKS CO NSULTED
Abram, David. Becoming Animal : an Earthly Cosmology. New York: Vintage Books,
2011. Print.
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous : Perception and Language in a More-thanhuman World. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc, 1997. Print.
Bryndís, et al. Uncertainty in the City. Berlin: The Green Box, 2011. Print.
Grosz, E. A. Chaos, Territory, Art : Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2008. Print.
Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2008. Print.
Landa, Manuel. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
Print.
Lippard, Lucy R. The Lure of the Local : Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New
York: New Press, 1997. Print.
Lippard, Lucy R. Undermining : a Wild Ride Through Land Use, politics, and Art in the
Changing West. New York: The New Press, 2014. Print.
Ramos, Filipa. Animals. London Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel Gallery The MIT Press,
2016. Print.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the
Collection. Durham London: Duke University Press, 1993. Print.

35