Migration & the Anthropocene
- Submitting institution
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Glasgow School of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 7528
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Practice-based multi-component output
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 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
- -
- 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
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This multi-component practice-based output comprises a substantial body of ambitious and large-scale work, completed over a three-year period (2014-17) and disseminated in 10 international exhibitions, including two sites in documenta 14, over a two-year period (2017-18). It includes: two films; 35 photographs; a 300km equestrian long-ride over 100 days; a sculpture; and a journal article. The central research method of ‘delegated performance’ involved a complex orchestration of participants and resources over a one-year development phase, an intensive year-long production phase and a one-year post-production phase. As such, we are proposing this as a double-weighted output for REF2021.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This output comprises 4 artworks, commissioned by international art quinquennial, documenta 14 (2017), and one journal article: 1) Criollo (7-min film; 15 photographs; artist’s book); 2) The Athens-Kassel Ride (large-scale public event); 3) The Transmit of Hermes (event, 3-hr film, 20 photographs, bronze sculpture); 4) The Parasite (artist’s book); 5) ‘Notes on Works for documenta 14 Athens & Kassel, 2017,’ Journal of Visual Arts Practice, 18(1), 2019. (External funding: £164,373.)
Following documenta, the works were disseminated in solo and group exhibitions at: Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, 2018; Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Glasgow International Festival, 2018; Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, 2018; Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, 2018; Rubicon Cinema, Ohio, 2020; Luxon Academy, Shenyang, 2020; Tsinghau University, Beijing, 2020; Guangzhou Academy, Guangzhou, Dec 2020–Jan 2021; Sichuan Institute, Chongqing, 2021.
The research asks: How might the figure of the journeying horse, conceived as companion-species, challenge the biopolitics of the border in an epoch of mass migration and the anthropocene?
It explores questions of posthumanism when addressed to the contemporary economic, political and ecological crises of mass migration and the Anthropocene.
Birrell’s methodology draws on critical theory, particularly Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal, Giorgio Agamben’s threshold moments of biopolitics and Donna Haraway’s theories of companion species. Methods include: literature surveys on the politics of human-animal relations; processes of polyphonic orchestration and delegated performance; site-specific filmmaking; and exhibition as a test bed for installation and audience response. This research sits within the fields of art as activism and art as cultural diplomacy, builds on other practice-based research that explores the metaphoric power of the animal - e.g. Snaebjornsdottir/Wilson (dialectic of domestic, pet/pest) and Tania Bruguera (the animal as state apparatus) - and contributes to understandings of the principle of free movement in the crossing of borders.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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