Porous Boundaries: Practicing the artistic and theological value of material limitations

Abstract

An account which looks disparagingly and suspiciously upon the material world—with its attributes of change, incompleteness, deterioration, decay, and death—is a fundamental characteristic of Modernity. It is uncontentious to remark that much of Christian theology shares this view, as both have been heavily influenced by such Hellenistic thought as those of Parmenides and Plato and their followers. Contrary to such negative views, this project wonders whether the very transcendence pursued by these (matter-suspicious) strands within both Modernity and Christianity might instead be revealed precisely in the fluxing and finite attributes of the material world.

Therefore, through both my art practice and my writing I explore aspects of this material world. Unlike materialist (or New Materialist) narratives, I anticipate that a numinous otherness can be revealed even within the immanent reality of matter. A central claim of this project is that certain works of art can elicit or aid in a perception of reality as pluralistically more-than-material, while also remaining deeply and essentially material. This paradox exceeds our ability to articulate in modes of academic or scientific discourse. Art can go further in grasping the tensions by embodying non-rational and poetic ways of engaging with such a reality but it, too, falls short. Yet, ways of exploring this gap between understanding and articulation, or between what we perceive and what we can understand, has precedence in Christian theological discourse, particularly in language of the apophatic, and in traditional attempts to represent the enigmatic inter-relationality of the Holy Trinity through the term, perichoresis.

Within the cultivation of an inter-material dynamic, this research suggests the Modern practice of fracturing and labelling various phenomena as ‘distinct’ or ‘discrete’, presumably in an attempt to better understand reality, has led to an erroneous sense of order while banishing that which resists a label. Categorisation itself is not the problem, and distinctions certainly predate Modernity—for example, between that which is considered sacred and profane, or likewise between the material and non-material or spiritual realms—yet Modernity has expanded the bifurcations innumerably. Not least in adding to proliferation was the desire to clearly delineate between Nature and Society/Culture, or in bracketing off that which we call ‘Religion’ as distinct from ‘Science’, and both from ‘Art’. These are often presumed to be fundamentally different approaches to understanding or experiencing life. This situation suppresses the capacity for something or someone to inhabit more than one category at the same time and tends toward explanations of homogenous totality.

In contrast, my project demonstrates and embraces a way of being-in-the-world which is fundamentally and essentially incomplete. I seek an inter-relationality: that at every level we see what Colin Gunton calls a ‘perichoretic’ reality, with everything (including, vitally, the triune God of monotheistic Christianity) revealed as a being-with, existing as both particular and inter-connected.

I explore this relational view of reality through my own art practice, which uses both installations and works-in-paper as mechanisms of thinking and knowing. My art process emphasises the participation of both the artist in the work, and of the art in the world. Rather than viewing the work of art as a static, distinct object, my work assumes an ongoing process and relationship with the world— the pieces are not separate from the world, including the viewer, and indeed non-material realities.

As the art deliberately changes and interacts with the surrounding world, it demonstrates a fallible epistemology which apophatically gestures toward otherness. In a related way, the styles of writing which I have employed for this project attempt to circumnavigate the academic dominance of the rational, thereby pointing toward a reality which is deeply entangled and porous yet maintains an intuitive logic and unity. Such writing suggests that the ragged edges of things are where the symbiotic inter-connections lie which reveal a perichoretic reality.

In a sense, this project is a continuation of the work of a previous generation of artists who have taken their art out of the gallery and into the world. One reading of these moves is an attempt to reconnect art with life, a longing to regain a pre-Modern integration within contemporary society. As such, Indigenous epistemologies offer some important pathways, not least an openness to the insights of the other-than-human world. Primary readings for this project likewise attempt to retie the Gordian knots which Modernity has presumed severed. To these conversations I am contributing the strain and ‘messiness’ of a theologically-informed art practice. From a different angle, this is an art-based theological quest which acknowledges the insights and limitations of science. I do not claim to have sufficiently closed any gaps. Instead, I suggest the central contribution of this project is a recognition of the possibilities such incompleteness offers for collaboration: inter-relational participation with microbial, fungal, animal, mineral, vegetable—or indeed spiritual—Others.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Dundee
Supervisor	Mary Modeen (Supervisor) & Trevor Hart (Supervisor)