REPTARQ · Ecstatic Utopias: Reorienting audiovisual Evocations of Place Towards A Relational Queer future
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-02-01 → 2024-01-31
- EU contribution
- €258,498
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Ecstatic Utopias: Reorienting audiovisual Evocations of Place Towards A Relational Queer future
We live in a world in crisis. We are living through and causing ecological collapse. Societies across the world exist in a seemingly permanent state of inequality. It can be hard to see beyond this present, beyond attempting to preserve the environment we live in, beyond attempting to preserve hard won efforts to move society towards equality. However, preserving what we have is doomed to failure as it does not change the conditions that created these crises. Ecstatic Utopias sought to create opportunities through art to give its audience an experience that transcends the present and the conditions that created the crises we live through. This transcendent experience aimed to offer a perspective that looks beyond the present and into a future of utopian potential. The Ecstatic Utopias project generated audiovisual art that aimed to help us see and feel beyond the present and towards the future. Reorienting our perspective away from preservation of the present and towards the creation of the future. This was an important and timely endeavour as it not only allowed some escapism for the audience who experienced the pieces but it could also have changed their frame of mind, encouraging them to think about a positive future rather than repeating the mistakes of the past. Drawing on queer theory and phenomenology, a theoretical framework was created which studied how queer aesthetics can be used to create transcendent experiences which give people the opportunity to reorient their perspective towards the future. This theoretical framework was then applied to the creation of an original, large scale artwork ‘The Here & Now is a Prison House’ - the theory informing the creative decisions made. The success or failure of this artwork was assessed and the framework updated based on the outcome. This process was repeated twice more to create a total of three original artworks including ‘Ephemeral Futures’ and ‘Clouds’ as well as a clear theoretical framework informed by experimentation and feedback. By the end of this project, a clear theoretical framework had been developed which shows how queer aesthetics can be used to potentially create transcendent experiences. This framework is supported by a portfolio of artworks which demonstrates how the framework can be put into practice and may be able affect people's experience of the world. The results from this project have shown that the framework and pieces may have been successful, however this is ultimately inconclusive as more evidence of audience reaction needs to be gathered before more concrete conclusions can be drawn. The portfolio and framework therefore stand as the groundwork for further investigation into the possibilities of transcendent queer art and its potential as a medium for rethinking the future.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
As people move through the world, affecting and affected by its sights, sounds and smells, we understand our localised experiences as constructing a perception and identity of place. Given its centrality to the human experience, understanding place has preoccupied artists and academics attempting to evoke and explore how we affect and are affected by the world. Artists utilising referential media such as photography and phonography have built up a body of work exploring visual and sonic evocations of place through recorded time. The ER’s theoretical and practice-led research has fed into this, uniquely utilising both photography and phonography as equals and taking advantage of their contrasting temporalities to create transcendent experiences of time and place. In this project, the ER will develop a new theoretical framework integrating queer, political and cultural theory to reorient the evocation of place away from an evocation of place in the past and towards a relational sense of queer futurity. Informed by this framework and utilising the transcendent rhythmic aesthetics of static and moving temporalities in recorded sound and image, the ER will create a portfolio of artworks built out of layers of affected and affective field recordings, photographs and videos to create complex assemblages of place as it exists in the past to produce an affective, emotive imaginary of a relational queer future. Mark Fisher identified the transformative potential of transcendent art to create an imaginary beyond the political context which produced the climate crisis and increasing inequality. In a context of rapid climate change, artistic and theoretical interventions in the way people relate to place and the environment we inhabit are vital. Reorienting this relationship towards the future lays the groundwork for a context in which change progresses society towards a vision of utopia rather than preserving the status quo which produced the situation we find ourselves in.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD · HUDDERSFIELDCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
- Simon Fraser University · BurnabyCanada
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union