An Emergent Practice of Applied Doubt and Wonder: Dismantling Imagined Boundaries and Awkward Repositioning for Wayfinding in the Anthropocene

This research based practice investigates a contemporary relationship to environment in the age of the Anthropocene. Conceptually led, this interdisciplinary practice ranges from drawing, photography, video, sculpture, to site-sensitive installation and performance while employing strategies of philosophical inquiry, characterized by applied doubt and wonder. Mindful of situation and context, this practice’s environmental ethic is drawn in specific materials and methods, which are often light, provisional and sustainable. Research within this practice spans the humanities, natural sciences, science fiction, history, philosophy, and arts. With a mindful attention to an awkward and multi-directional problem solving methodology, this practice works to research ways for re-imagining and weaving bonds with flora, rock, soil, water and sky. The thesis project titled sympoiesis, sought to reposition and propose alternate ways of perceiving and knowing the natural world. Inspired by the contemporary environmental writing of Jamie Lorimer and Donna Haraway, and responding to their calls of ‘awkward environmental humanities’ and ‘tentacular thinking’, sympoiesis reconsiders the social behaviours of plants and our likeness and relationship with them. Each artwork is a proposition that operates simultaneously as suggestions and possibilities for wayfinding in the Anthropocene.