Something between seaweed and rock: Body and nature, to be and the quest to belong

Abstract

This thesis uses artistic practice as ground for theoretic conceptual research. It does so by dialoguing art process with social justice and ecological concerns, embracing embodied experiences for a reform of the individual relation to nature and for attentiveness and intentionality towards it. The process is presented as photographs, drawings; and theoretical as well as poetic writings that combine both my artistic and academic work as a whole.

Each chapter addresses relationship-forming acts and advocates a conscious engagement with the natural environment. These rituals defend a sensuous being in the world, in this case, within an art practice that synchronously defies its place in art to accommodate forms that fall outside limiting and rigid precepts. They are belonging to the realm of life—their true essence being in the moment of their execution—and constitute a generative response to old inherited politico-cultural perspectives on nature and our entrenched ways of bonding with it. The proposition of a more profound enmeshment with the planet we inhabit may activate a behavioural shift that anchors into present times and spaces. In a panorama that incites a disregard for- and distancing from natural phenomena, the ultimate resistance is to weave connection with love and conscious perception.