Being Among: Reassembled Parts of an Incomplete Machine

Through practice-based and theoretical research, I consider relationships of connection and separation between objects, other living things, and myself against the backdrop of Western capitalist culture. Inspired by the practice-based research model of Graeme Sullivan, and Sarat Maharaj’s vision of the “contraption for generating knowledge,” I animate digital and kinetic assemblages as automated contraptions of inquiry (Maharaj 42). My practice employs a metonymic approach, activating the resonance of materiality and affect in order to draw the viewer toward alternate perceptions. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of consumption, and Agamben’s critique of anthropocentric systems of human/non-human separation inform the social context for my research. The thesis includes literary and visual art examples of ways cultural productions can shed light on conceptual dualities in Western society. Franz Kafka’s story Metamorphosis and Alan Rath’s sculptural assemblage Hound each portrays an implied fluidity between the human and non-human body. Mark Dion’s work brings into question the borders between nature and human culture, challenging our perceptions of such categories by repositioning the order of things (Thompson 46). The artworks—Boxette, Gidget Flying, and Mothlung—produced during my practice based research, use empathy, humour, and occasionally unease to draw the viewer toward a slightly altered perception of the relationship between humans and the things around us. My inquiry questions exclusions in Western ontology that have separated humans from non-humans. It reimagines these relationships not as subjects to objects, but as beings among beings, in hope of edging us toward more thoughtful relationships with the other things and beings of the world.