Earthwise

22 Jun-1 Jul 2023

PV 21 Jun 2023, 6-9pm

Overview

Workshop and performance dates to be confirmed - please check beaconsfield.ltd.uk

Beaconsfield hosts the PhD cohort at the Royal College of Arts’ School of Arts and Humanities to present an exhibition, event and publication series.

Earthwise invites a place of meetings and relations, without limit or system. A focus on the and and not the therefore ... is driven by the gathering forces of ecological, social and psychological crises that pose an inescapable reality for artists today. The term ‘Earthwise’ is inspired by Donna Haraway and her incitement to ‘earthwide’ situated and relational forms of knowledge. Haraway’s word is mutated to orient away from the vertical towards the horizontal, away from the separated stance of the eye/mind towards the uncertain discoveries of planetary processes and corporeal practices.

Earthwise implies

A reorientation from the human

Listening not imposing

Enlivenment

Questioning vertical hierarchies

Working with technology not under it

Situatedness and solidarity networks

Owing not owning

Reciprocity

Creating commons

Intergenerational thinking

“Other planes of there”

The publications and exhibition have been composed through the interactions of five PhD seminar groups (Curatorial Thinking, Material Engagements, Entanglement, Planet, Out in the OPEN) at the Royal College of Art’s School of Arts and Humanities. In the spirit of Earthwise, the publication and exhibition have been generated through processes of exchange, action, making, discussing, studying, and responding, to produce creative work that is enactive and environmentally sensitive.

Through this work we have raised questions about the connections between aesthetic practices and climate breakdown. More specifically what role the arts, expression and the imagination may play in becoming sensitive to and even finding routes out of catastrophe.

We are interested in the necessity of confronting the darkness of our times, while holding onto the hopeful forces that affirm and renew creativity and therefore life.