Beth Carruthers

Current and Upcoming Projects

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:28:00 -0500

The website/blog for last summer’s project at Dubai, UAE - A GREEN VISION - is down. A pdf version of the catalogue can be downloaded here: A Green Vision (Please note this is a sizable file at 6.2 mg)

Presentation/participation - Call and Response: Deep Aesthetics and the Soul of the World at Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change … a transdisciplinary workshop about the aesthetics, ethics, art, religion and ecology of the environment. Biological Station of Hiddensee, Germany May 24 - 28 2010

JULY 2010: JUROR - the Land Art Generator Initiative 2010 Design Competition

ECOART IN CANADA - A CONVERSATION & BRIEF SURVEY OF THE TERRAIN Part 1 of a 2 Part Series for the inaugural issue of WEAD (Women in Environmental Art) online magazine

RICHARD TWINE’S RECENT REVIEW of Leonardo’s Choice - Genetic Technologies and Animals is available here

Art, Place and the Meaning of Home - Catalogue essay for the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project Vancouver Canada. Now you can download the essay as a pdf document in “Writings” Section

Lecture/Conversation - RANE (Research in Art, Nature and Environment) Comprehending Nature Lecture Series … University College Falmouth (now incorporating Dartington Arts) … 6 pm March 29th 2010
Podcast now available here

Day long lecture and seminar on “Deep Aesthetics” - the role of the Aesthetic in engendering Environmental Values. With Alex Arteaga (Berlin) … Social Sculpture Research Unit Oxford Brookes University, UK … March 23rd 2010

Public Talk … Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World … March 28th 2010

Projects Archive

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:10:00 -0500

Summer 2009 - A Green Vision - project at Dubai, United Arab Emirates

A Green Vision was a 4-part project focused on Arts, Design and Sustainability - a first for Dubai. It was first a panel discussion and public forum (by invitation); this was followed by a residency for UAE artists, and then a juried exhibition. A catalogue and blogsite document the project.

My role as International Curator with a Sustainability focus was to plan and implement the project - specifically, develop and moderate the panel discussion, develop and lead the residency, curate the exhibition and work on the catalogue. The time-line was short and the project would not have been possible without my Co-curator in Dubai, Elizabeth Monoion, and the fantastic support of Hetal Pawani and the jamjar centre for the arts staff at Dubai.

The pdf version of A Green Vision catalogue can be downloaded here: A Green Vision (Please note this is a sizable file at 6.2 mg)

1998 - 2002 The SongBird project and the Society for Arts & Ecology in Practice, Vancouver Canada

A six-year arts-science collaboration focused on urban habitat, ethics and aesthetics in environmental change and inter-species relations.

Archived site here: SongBird

Beth Carruthers Biography

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:06:00 -0500

My work has for more than 20 years explored the ethics of the human-world relationship.

Academically, my focus is Posthumanism, Ethics, Ontology and the role of the Aesthetic in engendering Environmental Values. I write, publish and lecture internationally.

I also work as an independent curator and consultant in Arts & Sustainability. In 2006 I was commissioned by the Canadian Commission for UNESCO to create a major report on arts/science collaboration in Ecological Art Practices.

In the summer of 2209, I co-developed and led the first Arts & Sustainability initiative in Dubai, U.A.E. - A Green Vision - which was designed to introduce the language of sustainability to arts and design within Dubai and to be a template for further development.

As Founding Co-Director of the SongBird project and the Society for Arts & Ecology in Practice (1997 through 2002), I co-developed one of the first comprehensive science/arts collaborative organisations in Canada with a focus on Arts & Sustainability within urban communities.

I am pleased to be a member of the international curatorial advisory for the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) in Devon, England.

My current project explores the ethical dimensions of aesthetic engagement.

Statement

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:03:00 -0500

I am interested in the intertwining of aesthetic experience and ethics within cultures and communities. When I say cultures and communities, I include wild places, other species – the other-than-human. We do not live in this world alone, and community is an ongoing intimate interchange – a relationship we do not often consider, since we dwell within it.

Embedded in our westernized psyche and lifestyle is a core belief that nature is alien, outside of the human, and that nature is to be tamed and utilized. At the same time, a lived individual, personal and emotional relationship with the other-than-human is fundamental to our lives and well-being. The health and quality of this relationship is reflected in our values, beliefs and choices, and since personal relationships ultimately matter to us, this relationship with the other-than-human just may be the fulcrum of change.

Art comes into this because artists navigate the liminal spaces between self and other, bring back visions, translate and articulate messages, develop models of interchange. Art facilitates a process of learning through the engaged senses, at times bypassing conditioned patterns of thinking, allowing other ways of knowing to come forward, at times subtly, at times overwhelmingly.

My work explores how we humans navigate our relationship with the more than human world. It seeks territory beyond the borders of the accepted binary oppositions of mind/body, subject/object and nature/culture. It is profoundly concerned with lived meanings of dwelling and home. I’m curious about the intimacies of a shared biology, of the shared sensible – intimacies so obvious as to be unfamiliar. I question the taken-for-granted stance of human otherness.

Contact Beth Carruthers

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:24:00 -0500

My home base is coastal British Columbia, Canada.

I am best reached via email.

beth@bethcarruthers.com

writings

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:54:00 -0500

Art, Place and the Meaning of Home

An essay commissioned by the Vancouver Board of Parks for the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project

In Search of a Deep Aesthetics

Through the Eye of the Heart - In Search of a Deep Aesthetics is a first “working paper” for a book on Aesthetics, Ethics and Environmental Values. A paper given at Thinking Through Nature, University of Oregon, 2008

Intimate Strife: The unbearable intimacy of human/animal relations- published in Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals (2009) Carol Gigliotti, ed. Springer, Netherlands

An essay exploring the morally complex relationship between humans and non-human animals and in particular the ethics of using life-forms as media in arts practices.

Returning the Radiant Gaze

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s work on vision and engagement, among other writings, Returning the Radiant Gaze - Vision and Embodiment in a World of Subjects explores vision as central to relational engagement with world and Other.

Praxis … Acting As If Everything Matters

Drawing from a constellation of influences in philosophy, anthropology and the arts, this paper examines some contemporary Ecological Art works and practices as models of ethical engagement with our environing world.

Dreaming Human Being Animal 2 … the confounding of language

Drawing from Agamben’s The Open and the works of other scholars, DREAMING HUMAN BEING ANIMAL 2 - the confounding of language reconsiders language as shared among all animals, rather than as a point of division between human and non-human animals. A Plenary talk given at Desire Lines symposium on Art and Ecology at Dartington Hall UK, Summer 2007, and a paper given at Nature Matters, York University, October 2007

Dreaming Human Being Animal 1 … a shared ontology

Starting from Heidegger’s statement that “animals are poor in world”, this paper explores the idea of Dasein as not being specific to the human, but rather a quality of being that may be shared among species. Joseph von Uxkull’s work on different perceptual worlds and Agamben’s The Open are also sources.

Arts In Ecology … Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary EcoART Practice and Collaboration

A 26 page report with resources commissioned by the Canadian Commission for UNESCO in 2006 on Arts/Science Collaboration in land-based and community engaged environmentally focused projects. A preliminary report for the 2006 Think-Tank on Arts In Ecology held at Vancouver, Canada

Art, Sweet Art

A short article on the role of the arts in environmental awareness and change. Published in Alternatives Journal - the journal of the Environmental Studies Assn. of Canada, 2006