Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts

Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts “Weaving together tales by scholars and practitioners, Non-Representational Teory and Creative Arts is an important and timely contribution to the ongo- ing dialogue between cultural geography and creative art practice. Ambitious in scope, varied in style and innovative in format, the collection takes the reader on a compelling journey through stitches and studios, trees and art installations, water streams and ruins, geothermal vapours and musical tunes. It pushes for new tropes and vocabularies to talk about familiar and unfamiliar atmospheres, places, gestures, and all that stirs and eludes the human senses and imagination.” —Veronica Della Dora, Royal Holloway, University of London “Over the past ffteen years, non-representational theories have become central to the social sciences and humanities, inaugurating new ways of conceptualis- ing and approaching the world. Featuring a multidisciplinary range of contrib- utors who have been at the forefront of non-representational styles of thought and research, Non-Representational Teory and the Creative Arts is unique for its sustained and experimental engagement with the practices, styles and tech- niques of research that non-representational theories invite and ofer. As such, it will become an invaluable resource for researchers hoping to learn new ways of encountering and presenting the world.” —Ben Anderson, Durham University, UK “How might we envision a geography in the making, in the moving? With thought-provoking contributions that activate the afective force of the geo- logic, Non-Representational Teory and the Creative Arts explores the thresholds that move geography beyond representation toward its creative force. Entering the space of encounter, this book tests the limits of writing in a feld that has always explored what lurks at the interstice of line and fold.” —Erin Manning, Concordia University, Montréal Candice P. Boyd · Christian Edwardes Editors Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts Editors Candice P. Boyd Christian Edwardes School of Geography Arts University Bournemouth University of Melbourne Poole, UK Parkville, VIC, Australia ISBN 978-981-13-5748-0 ISBN 978-981-13-5749-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5749-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968354 © Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s) 2019 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Te publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations. Cover image: © Christian Edwardes Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Te registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Dedicated to Buster and Haru, our four-legged friends and companions on the journey who both departed before its end Foreword: Non-Representational Dreams Over the last few years, it has become almost commonplace to argue that human thinking does not conform to a picture/sentence model. Tis was a model in which people proceed by conjuring up a conveyor belt of representations, each of them seemingly as forensically detailed as a case being put forward in a court of law. Tey then put these tem- plates into operation as carefully considered actions. In the new model, human thinking is action-oriented—scrappy, deeply embodied, heavily infuenced by afective radiations, surfng on the cusp of activity, very often nonconscious and not necessarily centred on language. It slides. It is often loose, a yarn made up of partings as well as presences. To the extent that it proceeds according to a picture/sentence model, this is because of, frst, ‘cognitive gadgets’ (Heyes, 2018), routines constructed through social interaction which very often depend on the presence of various stabilising technologies—tools like writing, print, painting, video, music, recording—which aid in the installation and reinforce- ment of these gadgets, and, second, atmospheres which normalise ways of living by embedding theses routines in places. vii viii Foreword: Non-Representational Dreams Knowing all this may be important intellectually in that it provides a diferent sketch of what it is to be human and just how malleable and improvisational human is and can be. But what practical diference does it make? In a sense, that is the import of this book. We are not what we thought we are. We need new patchwork models of being human that understand the to and fro of ‘dividuality’ and the way that experience fits by, only momentarily joining up before it moves on, a task that can only become more urgent as the human species reaches over 7.4 billion. Tink of all that thinking. We need models that understand that much of that thinking is nonconscious and does not require explicit representation. And we need models that understand how that thinking ebbs and fows, travelling through many bodies at once. Te purveyors and engineers of modern information technologies have both understood this—not least because they have used this knowledge as an instrument to scale up their infu- ence in a world characterised by the scale made possible by platforms and corresponding super-profts—and misunderstood it in that their position is too often parasitic rather than symbiotic. (But remember, if fear, loath- ing and paranoia are contagious, so too are kindness and courage). It is no surprise then that the creative arts have taken up the chal- lenge of conjuring up this nonconscious world in diferent, less instru- mental ways by inventing the performative equivalents of brighter similes and metaphors which have the grip to change how we stand up to and alongside the world because so much of their work tracks the interface between showing and experiencing, between sensing and understanding, between enduring and living in the moment in a kind of joyful questing/questioning. Te creative arts, one might say, attempt to explore simultaneously the metaphysics of how nonconscious thinking is possible, the semantics of nonconscious thought, the epistemol- ogy of how it is possible to identify and represent this kind of thinking, and a variety of explanations of its inferential dimensions (Bermudez, 2003). Tey understand that nonconscious thought is not a minimalist version of cognitive thought and does not occupy some parallel realm. Rather, as Hayles (2017) would have it, there is a ‘cognitive nonconscious’ at work which has a diferent but often complementary mode of awareness with its own cognitive dimensions. Foreword: Non-Representational Dreams ix Tis impulse towards new means of working with this domain of thinking has been set out and annealed in various ways. I will mention just four of them. One is that the creative arts increasingly involve a mixed palette of means in order to work out ends. In part this is because the advance of technology allows performers to work in several registers more easily—sound, sight, the specifcs of bodily position, even smell all at once—gliding from one to another in ways which were much more difcult in the past (though by no means impossible, as the his- tory of opera, ballet and masque show only too well). At the same time, these advances make it possible to broaden out existing traditions and registers and afects in order to galvanise entirely new efects, as this book shows. Second, the creative arts have changed as a result—though perhaps not always as much as might be thought. Timeframes have changed, replacing the end of times depicted by numerous painters with contem- porary concerns that the Anthropocene might turn into an end game complete with its own monsters and ghosts (Tsing, Swanson, Gan, & Bubandt, 2017). Te means of treating time and space has changed too. For example, the still frame has been joined by a cinematically infected succession of moments and the map by instant georeferencing and the vastly expanded archive of overhead images. More materials can be used, tied together by the way that they resonate with each other. It has become possible to spend more energy on capturing the moment in the style of classical Chinese painting. And, correspondingly, attention to rhythm and dissonance has expanded. But, most importantly of all, the creative arts have become increasingly democratised as technology has allowed all kinds of people to reach out who could not have occupied cultural bandwidth before. Standard criticism tends to concentrate on creative artists within a framework of valuation set out by accompany- ing art institutions—to the exclusion of all of the people making art without requiring their imprimatur, the result being a kind of jaded- ness, even cynicism (Steyerl, 2017). But I don’t entirely buy this stance, not least because so many unsung people are now making art who have little or no interest in pecuniary reward or slotting into the game of cultural hierarchies.

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