Aesthetics as ecology, or the question of the form of eco art
- Submitting institution
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Cardiff Metropolitan University / Prifysgol Metropolitan Caerdydd
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- AD135
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Extending ecocriticism: Crisis, collaboration and challenges in the environmental humanities
- Publisher
- Manchester University Press
- ISBN
- 9781784994396
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Eco-art poses a problem to classification because its two terms have such broad meaning: after conceptual art, there are no restrictions on the material form art can take, and ecology covers notions of environment, nature, interactions with nature, interconnection, and a fundamental, ontological condition of belonging.
Research process
The method used in the article is philosophical analysis of texts, arguments and concepts. Clive Cazeaux considers recent attempts to classify the field, and suggests that, while they can be helpful, the full force of the problem of categorisation is better addressed by turning to the position given to aesthetics by phenomenology. This takes the problem of categorisation down to the level of how categories can be applied to experience when conventional, subject−object frameworks have been suspended. Our status as Da-seins, beings whose nature is always, already constructed by the environment around us, Cazeaux argues, makes prominent the role of the senses, indexicality and metaphor in the organization of experience, and provides a way of understanding aesthetics as ecology (in the broadest sense of the word).
Research insights
Although this leaves the classification of eco-art open, it nevertheless shows that the openness is a result of the complexities of our aesthetic rootedness in the world, where ‘aesthetic’ is understood in sensory, causal and metaphorical terms. The value of this approach is that it calls attention to significance of classification as an action that creates divisions in the world. Furthermore, it positions eco-art as a practice which can raise awareness of the responsibility we have as Da-seins (or beings-in-the-world) for choosing how to understand and act upon these divisions.
Dissemination
The book was published in print and digital form by Manchester University Press in October 2017.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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