Projects for Micro-Utopia, Project #4

Through sculptural explorations using everyday objects and materials, my work investigates the potential for social transformation through material explorations in art. Drawing on strategies found in both art and design, I explore connections between material culture and the social ideals of a larger collective. Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch refers to the goal of utopia as "being-here". I aim to address being-here through a sculptural exploration of the objects and things that are ready-at-hand in my immediate surroundings. Using combinations of handmade and readymade objects, I'm interested in relationships between the individual hand and larger industrial systems. By exploring relationships between individuals and collectives through sculptural objects and installation, my work aims to reframe utopianism in a contemporary context, acknowledging a world in which materials might also act as agents. Through this work I intend to make a critical intervention using a material practice to address issues of sustainability, and a broader range of problems including social and economic alienation. Materials are full of quiet, unknown potential, both hopeful and unsettling. Political theorist Jane Bennett describes the material stuff of life as "vibrant matter". I'm interested in this notion of the vitality of materials, and through my art practice I explore the possibility that matter may have unseen agencies and a greater impact than we readily acknowledge. How might objects be considered as subjects, and what larger ramifications might this shift in perspective have? By participating in material enquiries, I examine the relationship between utopian imagining and the immediacy of materials, aiming to question late capitalist models of consumption and excess. Drawing on various strategies including idea-led, material-led, and use- what-you've-got approaches to making, my work poses questions about the possibility of creating "embodied utopias", in which idealism merges with the lived experience of the body. My thesis research explores being- here with materials, by which I mean: exploring my desire for an ideal state of being, in dialogue with a shifting, continually transforming relationship with materials.