BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN
Artist seminar series – weekly online presentations. 13 May – 25 June 2025
The Museum of Loss and Renewal

Ineffable Vocabularies – ‘between the human and the non-human’

“This seminar series invites six arts practitioners to submit an example of their own work for discussion. There will be emphasis on work processes and consideration of potential challenges when working with ‘entanglements’. One artist will present work each week over one hour with a seventh session to conclude. The intention isn’t to showcase work but rather discuss origins, developments, possible failings and successes. For the purpose of these seminars, work may be defined as ‘in progress’ even if it is seen to be complete. Presentation and new critical appraisal from fellow artists will possibly ‘recalibrate’ the work. Our aim is to openly explore languages, vocabularies and translations of ineffable relations between the human and non-human. Given the destabilisation of ecosystems and repercussions, our need to discuss these relationships is more pertinent than ever.”

Seminar research premise:
Charles Bowden wrote much about the harsh North American Southwest and desired a deeper connection that places nature within us, “We can never connect to nature once we say the word nature“. But this problem with language separating us from emotional experiences might be challenged by the German word, waldeinsamkeit, expressing ‘the solitude of the forest’ as a feeling of wholeness. Nature is experienced emotionally and a ‘connection’ is enabled. Our interactivity with natural landscapes is integral, as anthropologist Tim Ingold states, “Our actions do not transform the world, they are part and parcel of the world transforming itself“. Debbie Lisle describes human interactions or ‘entanglements’ with non-human life-forms as, “… intangible substances like ideas and atmospheres …breaking with anthropocentric formulations by affording agency to actors beyond the human“. How do we express these entanglements artistically? Is it possible to invent a vocabulary that refrains use of religious tropes, working towards a ‘secular ineffability’?

Programme:
7 weeks of conversations organised as presentations to be listened to and seen, followed by immediate and delayed reflections.

Organised and hosted by:
Mark Aitken (UK/Finland)
Tracy Mackenna (UK/Italy)

Invited artists:
Luce Choules (France)
Sarah Damai Hoogman (Netherlands)
Emily Fong (Australia)
Marianne Hoffmeister Castro (Chile/USA)
Jonty Sale (UK)

Links:
Link to The Museum of Loss and Renewal
Link to Mark Aitken
Link to Emily Fong
Link to Sarah Damai Hoogman
Link to Marianne Hoffmeister Castro
Link to Tracy Mackenna
Link to Jonty Sale

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WORDS RECORDED

“Not process but methodology. Trees, hedgerows, blossom. Intuition. Section edge. Picture surface. Open energy. Made not of words but of gestures. Just a register. Expansion. Drawing, talking. Multiple layers of grief. Ritual. Stem cells. Head and neck. Out of body. Landscape is a body. Solid as stone, porous as skin, paper thin. Walking as a ritual. Body being drawn. Reciprocity. Personal relationship to place. Working with vibration. Negative air ion and water molecules. Sand dance. Working with the permafrost. Spaces look empty, but there is always something there. Invisible, audible, attuned. Everything on its own time. Making the intangible tangible. Embroidery as human-scale gesture. Filmic. Moving vertically. Past is palpable and readable. Touch the time. Composition in relation to movement. Producing and filtering. Performance as tactile. Intimate register. Permanence of geologic time. Connect through the sensorial. Long time, deep time. Gaps. Unused materials. Backwards, forwards. Touch, in touch. Decentring. Animal as a metaphor. Represent without falling into tropes. Ancestral kin and nuisance. Residue, consequence. Testimony of world-building. Intentional marks. Recognise the aesthetics. Nearness. Totemic status becomes central. Presence. Hearing is last sense to have, absolute silence follows. Authority as narrator. Simultaneous nature of experience. Agency. Potential. A memory existing in the future. Everything coming from within.”

Documents of conversation. 2025