work
An Animated World
| category | Painting |
| subject | Political / Social, Landscape, Nature |
| tags | freestyle landscape, Earth, Gaia, pattern, pattern roller, plants |
| base | 330 cm |
| height | 160 cm |
| depth | 0 cm |
| year | 2021 |
What does it mean to live in "an animated world, an Earth that vibrates underfoot" (Bruno Latour: Facing Gaia), how does it feel to perceive the Earth as a reacting body? It is tempting to go too far and interpret every earthquake, every (natural) disaster as the Earth's response to the destructive action of humans. "Nature strikes back" is a phrase often used in articles on the climate crisis. But the "overanimation" is fatal when the belief in God's punishment now becomes nature's punishment.
"Both deanimating and overanimating still mean not respecting the animation proper to the discoveries of the world made by the sciences. Deanimation, let us recall, is not a primary process but, rather, a secondary treatment, polemical and apologetic, which attributes to the sciences and the world they describe the behavior of inert and obtuse things that are as unlike them as the overanimation proposed by their adversaries." (Bruno Latour: Facing Gaia)
It is necessary to find a completely new balance in thinking, to radically change our concept of the living being Earth down to the deepest layers.
The painting "An Animated World" is done with gouache, spray paint and acrylics on unstreched canvas. Distorted, fragmentary but nonetheless beautiful landscapes are combined with found quotes and scraps of words that shook me and should do the same to the viewer. It is part of the series "How to Speak about the Earth", which was started in fall 2020. At its heart is the engagement with the the so called "climate crisis" and Bruno Latour's analysis of the current situation in his book "Facing Gaia".
"Both deanimating and overanimating still mean not respecting the animation proper to the discoveries of the world made by the sciences. Deanimation, let us recall, is not a primary process but, rather, a secondary treatment, polemical and apologetic, which attributes to the sciences and the world they describe the behavior of inert and obtuse things that are as unlike them as the overanimation proposed by their adversaries." (Bruno Latour: Facing Gaia)
It is necessary to find a completely new balance in thinking, to radically change our concept of the living being Earth down to the deepest layers.
The painting "An Animated World" is done with gouache, spray paint and acrylics on unstreched canvas. Distorted, fragmentary but nonetheless beautiful landscapes are combined with found quotes and scraps of words that shook me and should do the same to the viewer. It is part of the series "How to Speak about the Earth", which was started in fall 2020. At its heart is the engagement with the the so called "climate crisis" and Bruno Latour's analysis of the current situation in his book "Facing Gaia".
