An aesthetic experiment and scenography exploring Donna Haraway’s Oddkin and circular economy through close collaboration with the Oyster Mushroom. The work was created and performed at Norwegian BioArt Arena, NOBA September-October 2018
“What happens when human exceptionalism and bounded individualism, those old saws of Western philosophy and political economics, become unthinkable in the best sciences, whether natural or social?” Donna Haraway
From a scenographic perspective, aspects of the Anthropocene can be read as a spatial event: Humans encroaching, infringing, and even violating the spaces of non-humans. Our touch, sound, light, scent and materials permeate the planet. Consequently, can a new awareness of the other, a decentering of the human and an offering up of space, all be subversive and defiant acts to help us propel out of the Anthropocene?
My immersive installation, aesthetic experiment and master production in scenography cocreat:e:ures (29.08.18-14.10.18) attempts to tie together scenographer and the Oyster Mushroom in an equally-footed trans-species alliance via disused spaces and waste materials at Vitenparken, campus Ås, (NO), in an endeavour to conjure up new realities. The project investigates what happens when we as artists try to shift our perception of other beings to collaborative partner and (odd)kin (Haraway), instead of stranger, prop or material to manipulate.
The work is set up as a meeting space between humans and non-humans, moving from a human “lab” into a shared space, ending in a fungal space, not accessible to humans. Elements normally decided by a human designer for humans now follow the needs and rhythm of the fungal partner, which moves from darkness into light as the fungi grows, and with moisture becoming a key scenographic element. The project thus challenges and critiques the production structures of- and mode of creation in the performing arts field, in the context of the Anthropocene.
Can changing the very mechanisms of our creative processes enable us to make a difference in the ecological crisis we are in?
