Liminal Speculations: Art, Nature and the Material Turn
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University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 2017+ University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2019 Liminal Speculations: Art, Nature and the Material Turn Eva L. Hampel Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1 University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. 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Hampel Supervisors: Dr Susan Ballard Professor Amanda Lawson Professor Ian McLean This thesis is presented in fulfilment of the requirement for the conferral of the degree: Doctor of Philosophy This research has been conducted with the support of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship University of Wollongong School of Law, Humanities and Arts August 2019 Abstract Liminal Speculations: Art, Nature and the Material Turn Since the turn of the 21st century, there has been a tremendous groundswell of art dealing with ‘nature’, a concept itself problematic in critical thought. This groundswell has occurred in part as a response to mounting global concern over the massive environmental changes of the geological period called the Anthropocene. In addressing the nexus between the renewed focus on ‘nature’ and the contemporaneous critical approaches referred to as the material and speculative turn, this thesis focuses on a body of landscape paintings, together with interdisciplinary contemporary works, concerned with indeterminate and affective forms. Against a tendency to theorise such art with outdated romantic frameworks, I propose the concept of ‘the liminal’ as an alternative way to understand and enlarge this art’s engagement with ‘nature’ and the natural world. The concept of the liminal is related to the new materialist and speculative turn and its underlying philosophy drawn from Deleuze and Guattari, which I argue provides the means to understand the transformative power of art and its political import. The thesis traces the shift in art that addresses the ‘natural’world, or the ‘more-than-human’ world, from the era of land art to the contemporary period, and identifies a number of contemporary artists who approach ‘nature’ through the liminal. I examine in detail the work of two artists–Gerhard Richter and Imants Tillers–arguing that their practices are consistently located within a liminal space but using quite different means. Both work within the art-‘nature’ space amongst a range of other subjects. I identify elements of these and more recent contemporary artists’ works which create liminal qualities of speculation, indeterminacy and wonder. Through analysing the work of Richter and Tillers in particular, I establish an unbroken strand of liminal practice in art dealing with ‘nature’ and the natural world, particularly in painting, from romanticism to new materialism. I also relate these elements of speculation, indeterminacy and wonder, particularly for recent artists, to contemporary material thinking in order to show how the work of contemporary artists dealing with ‘nature’ can be located within ideas such as deep time, contingency, entanglement and Jane Bennett’s approach to the vitality and agency of matter. In conclusion I suggest that the new material and speculative turns–paired with the transformative power of the liminal and inflected by Isabelle Stengers’ concept of “wonder” and Elizabeth Grosz’s connections between ecology, energy, excess, and art–offer a contemporary critical framework for theorising such artworks and practices. 1 2 Acknowledgments I would like first and foremost to acknowledge the great patience, encouragement, and very considerable effort of my three supervisors: Professor Ian McLean, Professor Amanda Lawson, and Dr Susan Ballard. They have been consistently committed to the worth of the project, through its long gestation and bumpy road, and I thank them in a very heartfelt way for their consideration and validation of the research, and their hard work to bring the project to fruition. I would also like to thank Professor Ian Buchanan, whose early suggestion of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as a potentially profitable line of philosophical inquiry proved invaluable in providing a theoretical base for thinking the entire concept of the liminal. The thinking of Deleuze and Guattari, among others, forms a foundation for the entire thesis. Involvement with the Research Groups Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO) and Centre for Critical Creative Practice (C3P) at the University of Wollongong has provided much valued stimulus and collegial interaction with other academic staff at the University. I would particularly like to acknowledge all of my co-authors on the book 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (The MECO Network 2019, Open Humanities Press, London, http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/one-hundred-atmospheres/) which was produced during the course of the thesis preparation. Their friendship and generous and cooperative manner of undertaking this co-authored book project gave me a home within the University. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the University of Wollongong and the Australian Federal Government in awarding to me an Australian Postgraduate Research Award to support this research. The award was instrumental in enabling the initial years of the project. I am keen now to build upon the publication of 100 Atmospheres by researching and promoting creative works engaging with nature within an Australian context, an avenue I see as essential in the contemporary age of the Anthropocene. Inevitably, such a long project is stressful for a candidate’s family. I would like to thank my children, Ruby and Finn, for their forbearance and good humour as the dining table remained a desk and workspace over literally years, and my preoccupation with completing the work became something near an obsession. They were patient, amused, generous, and only very rarely frustrated by my lack of interaction and commitment to domestic matters. 3 I would also like to thank especially warmly my parents, Ian and Lisbeth Hampel, who tolerated with great generosity very rationed time for visits and relaxation together. I would like to thank above all my father, a highly honourable and selfless man, who sadly did not live to see the project completed or his rewards of time to spend together realised, although it came within weeks. About a year before completion, my father christened the work “The Eternal Project” and I will never cease to regret that for him, it was. I dedicate this work to my father. 4 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ 1 Liminal Speculations: Art, Nature and the Material Turn .................................................. 1 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ 3 Certification ................................................................................................................................. 5 Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... 6 List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. 8 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 11 A Paradigm Shift to the Material, and Where the Liminal Comes In .............................. 11 New materialist and speculative realist thought ................................................................... 16 The romantic sublime ........................................................................................................... 18 The research question ........................................................................................................... 20 Structure of the thesis ........................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 1 ...................................................................................................................................