The dying lake: Waikare and the embodied artist

Abstract

This presentation discusses a practice-led PhD thesis that considers how artistic action in a heavily polluted, localised environment might lead to an experience and expression of embodiment. Accordingly, the research question asks: How might lens-based recording serve in communicating an embodied connection to land? The research investigates alternative ways of considering value from embodied localised engagement with the land. In adopting this position, the study considers the Anthropocene as inseparable from cognition and shifts its focus from global, political mobilisation, to embodied relationality (Ingold, 2021). The project, that is currently 18 months into development, explores the subjective relationship between the practitioner and his environment, where an intrinsic connection is actioned between knowing and doing. This perspective aligns with the concept of ‘situated cognition’ where knowledge is inherently located within the context of activity (Brown et al., 1989). The presentation uses composited photographic images, and moving image sequences of Lake Waikare, to consider the nature of duration (Bergson, 1957) and an intimate connection with a single site. Methodologically, the project constitutes a heuristic inquiry that utilises a subjective, iterative, reflective approach to problem-solving. The significance of the study lies in its contribution to existing discourses surrounding how embodied experiences of land (interpreted through multi-mediatic approaches) can be used to elevate the intimate and the visceral and negotiate a narrative of experience that considers processes of disconnection, destruction, and reconnection.