My practice-based research focuses on developing a futurist utopian methodology from which to look back on violence to the farmed nonhuman, to defamiliarize contemporary values and actions; and to ‘unconceal’ the violence of normalising language and epistemologies relating to the farmed nonhuman. In its current form my practice is influenced by post structuralism. 

I see a futurist utopian methodology as activist – bringing into being a peaceful future in which the relationship of human to nonhuman is based on both an ethics of care and on granting the nonhuman moral status in a framework of More-than-human Rights. 

This suggests a critique of the anthropocentrism within humanism and modernism – (giving rise to biocapitalism and the biotechnology that supports it), that allows humans to believe that the ‘other’ animal exists for human use and exploitation. 

Research question:

How can futurism, as an artistic method, contribute to defamiliarising violent discourse, fabricating alternative perspectives, and engendering ‘that which does not yet exist’ for nonhuman justice, particularly for ‘farmed animals’ in biocapitalism ? 

My work for the farmed nonhuman stem from my experiences growing up on a dairy and sheep farm in North Yorkshire. We were tenant farmers and the farm had been farmed by my grandfather before my father took it over. It was then farmed by my brother and now my niece. My family trace their ancestry back to generation after generation of dairy and sheep tenant farmers in the same area on both sides of the family. As a child I was the cook for a family of 9, and this lead to me training to be a cookery teacher when I left home at 16. Cookery in my family and my culture revolves around eating nonhumans and their excretions. In the words of Justyna Stepien (2022), ‘We are bodies full of bodies that connect ..thus we are material beings interconnected with other organic and non-organic substances.’

I started the PhD in October 24 and am part time – I have completed the equivalent of 4 months of a full time research degree and for much of this time have been focused on making new artworks, and developing my research methodology. This talk is a response to my last tutorial with Dean who challenged me to think more about empathy, understanding and compassion to the nonhuman. Of course I do think these are all crucial, but they are not the central focus for my practice currently. 

I thought about this conversation and concluded, rightly or wrongly, that Dean’s challenge arises from impacts of new materialisms and the related ‘animal turn’ in contemporary arts. (As idoes Stepien’s quote above).  I decided therefore to focus this talk on new materialisms, examples of contemporary artists working within new materialist frameworks, some problems I have with new materialism, and end with an outline of where I am at with my research methodology currently (if time) and my decision to form a collaborative collective of artists focused on using the visual utopian method to make artworks.  I see the formation of this group as part of my PhD. 

I will start by sharing my practice since last October. I should say these works are not explicitly related to recent developments in biocapitalism or bioengineering, although important to note that biocapitalism has always existed in relation to the farmed nonhuman and the farmed nonhuman has been bioengineered for centuries]. 

New materialism. 

New Materialism is a movement within posthumanism. Many new materialist academics are also feminists, including Karen Barad, Rosie Braidotti and Donna Haraway. New Materialisms offer concepts with which to think differently about the world. They first, reject humanism, with its emphasis on human development and growth. They reject the humanist scientific lens with its emphasis on human-centered knowledge production, its general anthropocentric position, its belief in human exceptionalism, which has led, they argue to destruction and extractivism in the natural world. These philosophers argue that if humans are to survive in some form, their colonising and extractivist views and activities have to shift. 

New materialisms include a number of different positions that share in common concepts to help us think differently about the world. These concepts include:

• Relationality
• Postanthropocentrism
• Monism
• Flat Ontology

These four concepts help define what is ‘new’ about new materialism; and how it differs from a Marxist Historical Materialism. All materialisms share the idea that reality exists apart from human perception – it comes into being through material affects. ‘New’ Marterialism seems to have partly been a response to post structuralism, which focuses on an idealist view of reality – our perceptions, formed through discourse, shape our reality.  

The first concept, Relationality, is central to new materialism. It stresses the connections between all matter and the ways in which we are constantly ‘becoming’ as matter collides and interacts. It also focuses on the extent to which human biology is NOT distinct from other matter e.g. the high concentration of bacteria in the human body. 

Focus on connection between all matter is foundational for the other concepts. For example if we are all connected or entangled (as Einstein also pointed out – he said that disconnect was ‘a kind of visual optical delusion’) – then the humanist hierarchical placement of humans as privileged, exceptional and most important species is challenged. 

The second concept of postanthropocentrism relates to this posthumanist critique of a human centered  perception of the world, that is responsible for much damage to ‘other’ nature including the climate crisis. New materialisms seek to challenge and topple this privileged view of humans. 

The third concept – monism – is a critique of dualism in Western thinking. For example: nature-culture; mind-body; agency-structure; man- woman; even human-nonhuman. A critique of dualism is not unique to new materialism – post structuralism also critiques dualisms and pointed out that one of the pair is privileged over the other. 

New materialisms, especially critique what they see as a dualism between mind and body prevalent in humanist thought. New materialists such as Karen Barad, responded to humanism, including post structuralism, when they argued that corporality – the body – matters. Privileging of the mind over the body, and particularly the idea of the overwhelming importance of rationality as specifically human has relegated the body, and matter generally to a very lowly state. In NM thinking, all matter has agency and affect. and they argue that this leads to the problem of anthropocentricsm, which emphasises human exceptionalism – largely based on the idea that human thinking, rationality and agency makes them superior to other nature. 

The Fourth concept – flat ontology is related to previous ideas: all matter and bodies are equally important and play a role in creating reality. There are no hierarchies. 

New materialisms, as part of post humanisms, emphasise a critique of knowledge production as only cultural , and human-centered, or the divisions between mind and body suggested by this view of the cultural production of knowledge. They suggest that biology, or matter, is equally important to constructing reality, as discourse, – including language.

Every major philosophy is based on ontological assumptions, and understanding the ontological concepts that help distinguish new materialism from, say post structuralism is most helpful in understanding new materialism generally. 

Ontology concerns How something comes into being. How reality is produced. The answer new materialists give is that reality arises from the context: from inter-relational processes – the mixing of matter. Karen Barad’s relational ontology does not reject discursive practices but argues for a merger of discursive and materialist practices. 

Post structuralists on the other hand, perceives reality as produced through ideas, language and events. 

From this start – that reality arises from inter-relational, bodily, processes – it seems logical for the new materialist to emphasise the connections between all life.   

New materialisms, as part of the posthumanist movement, have lead to an emphasis in contemporary art on entanglements, connections’ performing with, or making with, or making for, rather than making about. These artists and art critics write about ‘thinking with’ or ‘collectively produced systems’. They recognise symbiotic relationships between the human and other animals, between the human and the earth, and between the human and machine. They argue that these connections raise ethical questions about our relationship to other beings and the environment and urge that we move beyond anthropocentric perspectives. They champion the adoption of an ethics of care. Because of their critique, and rejection, of ‘making about’ the ‘other’ animal, they are critical of representation, reflection and illustration. They emphasise ‘performing with’ other living matter as a ‘means of thinking withcompanion species for collectively producing systems.’ (Stepien, p. 77.) New materialist artists actively take part in creating more than human entanglements. They challenge the uniqueness of the human – and argue we are closer to distant species in terms of viruses than we thought. They shift from conceptualism, which highlighted ideas, language and documentation of events ,and in the contemporary arts, they engage in projects that performatively enact life. As a research methodology new materialism leads to an emphasis on jumping into a boat on the river to experience life with, rather than standing on the bank observing. They also emphasis process, and becomings, rather than end products. For this reason performance is often the chosen medium. 

Examples of contemporary art that appears to be influenced by new materialisms, as chosen by Justyna Stepien’s include: 

1, Kelly

2. Picinni

3. Cak

4. Burton and Nitta

Critique

I very much welcome the new materialist focus on rejecting anthropocentricism, emphasising connections, entanglements, the notion of ‘becomings’, the need for empathy and compassion and an ethics of care toward the ‘other’ animal or what they generally call, ‘companion species’,  and bringing to centre stage a concern with the more-than-human world, neglected in much previous academic writing. (Apart from Critical Animal Studies, which has largely been a marginalised academic activity, although a rapidly growing focus for activism).  I believe too that CAS welcomes this rejection of anthropocentric thinking and actions. 

However, for me, new materialism is problematic as a philosophy in which to ground my art practice for the following reasons:

1. PM offers valuable perspectives on interconnectedness, but it still leads to reducing animals to objects or resources in a human-derived narrative, and with human decisions about actions. 
2. While challenging the idea of a singular, privileged human subject, at the same time posthumanism, along with new materialism, inadventently  and simultaneously reinforces existing power structures and hierarchies. In art it does this, for example, by working with, or performing with, or researching with other beings. A fundamental tenet of research ethics is informed consent. To alter any animal or plant DNA is not to make with. It is to perform on. To take a zebra’s hide and show it in a museum with altered facial characteristics is not to work with. In both these examples there is no conceivable benefit for the nonhuman or more-than-human. In writing about that work it is argued that the zebra entanglement might make us look at nonhuman animals with more compassion or differently and encourage us to develop and ethics of care. There is no evidence for this, and it is interesting tht the main feature of the animals – the face – is human and is NOT taxidermied. The genetic material from human blood is added to the flower genetic material – thus altering the flower for ever – the flower DNA is not added to the human. The privileged human makes the decisions and enacts them. Thus the power relationship is not changed. This is not to say that a way could not be found for true  collaboration. The algae opera (2012) by Burton and Nitta in which an opera singer produces carbon dioxide to feed algae, then turned into sushi fed to the audience is perhaps an example with human and more-than-human benefit.
3. This work neglects the unique experience, agency and lack of autonomy of the non-human leading to continuation of speciest injustice. It neglects by blurring the boundaries of human and nonhuman. For example, the farmed nonhuman leads a life of singular cruelty – her children are removed every year. She is forced to produce more milk than is bearable. When she is still young she cannot continue this life of servitude and is sent to slaughter. The idea that the human and the cow are in any way entangled on an equal playing field is nonsense. The cow is an object of human exploitation and biocapital accumulation. Recognising our similarities is not an ethics of care. An ethics of care is to recognise her moral rights as a living being, and stop treating her like this. 
4. Focusing on hybrid subjects downplays the specific needs of nonhuman animals. Same point really. Farmed nonhuman wellbeing is directly threatened by human activities.
5. NM pretty much ignores the intersectionality of oppression. 
6. Ignoring specific ways that animals engage with the world can suggest homogenization of animal experience.
7. NM and PH do call for thinking differently about how we understand the relationship with ‘other’ nature but they remain silent on the torture and murder of billions of farmed nonhumans and do not advocate for them to be treated with respect and dignity. Basically Ph and Nm are not activist philosophies. 

CAS advocates for explicit anti-speciesist frameworks that address and challenge the historical and ongoing oppression of non-human animals, for example on farms and in zoos. Blurring boundaries between species can be interpreted as a justification for continued exploitation of nonhuman animals and may not explicitly recognise the inherent moral status and value of nonhumans e.g. while NM calls for an ethics of care for ‘companion animals’ they do not write about moral status and rights to life for all nonhumans. A flat ontology suggests that humans, bacteria and cows, for example, are equally important, but in NM bacteria get a far greater ethical consideration than do cows . 

Final thoughts

Karen Barad’s relational ontology does not reject discursive practices but argues for a merger of discursive and materialist practices. I place my making in the discursive practice arena. I should emphasise here that writing about discursive practice within a poststructuralist framework does not focus at all on the non-human animal world either. My work is also heavily influenced by Critical Animal Studies, which of course does. Perhaps the challenge for me is to explore whether I could bring materialist practices into this work. I have NOT yet focused very much on the bioengineering aspect of my research question, and next year I plan for this to be the focus. Bioengineering certainly suggests a focus on ‘becomings’, which is a primary idea in new materialism (i.e. humans are not static but constantly becoming something else). My intention of focusing on xenoplantation seems ripe as an area for exploring  material and discursive practices together. I could imagine, for example, a fictional archive of the courts, held in 2036, after the Giant Rupture, that document the repartions made to nonhumans for thousands of years of human murder and cruelty. This could focus on critique of the discourses of pre-rupture, but might also include the voices of those who became hybrid human-pigs. There has been a similar court where humans are on trial for damaging the environment. 

Other areas of learning from this study of new materialism include the all important question from Biswas and Vangeest (2024 who ask ‘what conditions might make possible a ‘post anthropocentric’ or ‘non anthropocentric’ narrative? I can imagine using this question in my art practice. The final pages of Justyna Sepien’s (2022) book raise a further thought. She writes that ‘it is through metabolism that all organisms in the planet are entangled….metabolism as a generative force contributes to the cycles crucial for sustaining our lives on the planet.’ (p 116). If I were to focus more specifically on what we eat, metabolism could be a focus. She quotes Burton and Nitta on the impacts of biotech design that could help us ‘imagine how our bodies in the future could be redesigned to eat differently, and how new rituals of eating will create new relationships.’ (117). I find this interesting although feel anxiety that because our bodies are redesigned to eat differently doesn’t necessitate we also give all nonhumans moral rights and autonomy). 

My current methodology

See chapter on visual utopian experiments

Ref

Biswas, N and Vangeest, J (2024). Human, all too human? Anthropocene narratives, posthumanisms, and the problem of ‘post-anthropcentrism.’ The Anthropocene Review. 2024. Vol 11 (3). 599-613. Sage. 

Stepien, J. (2022) Posthuman and nonhuman entanglements in contemporary art and the body. Oxford and New York: Routledge. 

---