Paper short abstract:

Through a close reading of contemporary artworks by Bianca Hester (AU), Iriani Halperin (US), Robert Zhao Renhui (SG), Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho (KR) this paper explores how interdisciplinary artists collaborate with geology in order to offer new ways of mapping planetary transformations.

Paper long abstract:

A number of contemporary artists approach geology as a multispecies witness. However discussions of the multispecies within environmental histories tend to focus on (animal and vegetable) species that humans consider to be ‘living.’ Through a close reading of contemporary artworks by Australian artist Bianca Hester, American-Scottish artist Iriani Halperin, Singaporean artist Robert Zhao Renhui, and Korean duo Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho this paper proposes the geology of the planet itself as a multispecies witness. Each artist discussed here engages in a speculative practice that builds new ways to consider landscape as a living form emergent from, and in collaboration with, geological matter. Each artist enters into a transformative relationship with a specific location/ landscape on the planet, whether via extractive materials, surface, subsurface, or archive.

Furthermore, these artists all challenge the legacy of Linneaus by reforming the species boundaries between human and nonhuman, mineral, animal, and vegetable. If animal or plant sentience is critical to our understandings of landscapes within the Anthropocene, then addressing the geological as a species of sentient witness opens up new (and old) ways to expand multispecies understandings of landscape. The artists discussed in this paper all offer new ways to think about and experience specific geological relationships as key contributors to any ecosystem and imagine landscapes as living environments. Building on their work, this paper suggests that collaboration with geological forms offer a new way of mapping and understanding the transforming multispecies landscapes of the planet.