both/and

Either: projects along the lines of art as social practice — interfaces between humans and more-than-humans

Or: what does living in a both/and condition mean? What does it mean to be complicit with environmental problems — or at the very least living in an ‘impure’ ethical world?

Relevant texts:

Either

Schwarz, N. (2017). -ing. In K. Wilkinson (Ed.), Know Thy Neighbour # 1 (pp. 36-45). Perth: Spaced.

Or

What kinds of publics and commons are brought into relation—necessarily ephemerally and temporarily—through this walking methodology? Those with whom we already agree, or those against whose views and practices we struggle? Those with whom we find any easy kinship, or those whose existence we may not easily register? Our response: both/and. This is the space of “ambivalence” and of “awkwardness, complicity, and intimacy” that we want to cultivate, because “either/or” hasn’t got us very far in terms of collectively addressing the fate of our planet, and all of the messy ecologies that are implicated in that question. We think of this practice of “both/and” as a cleaving—one of those delightful and vexing words that means both a thing and its opposite. In this walkshop we are cleaving: both the act of splitting or severing and the act of sticking fast, of becoming emotionally involved or attached.

Neimanis and Phillips

Neimanis, A., & Phillips, P. (2019). Postcards from the Underground: Walkshopping as Relationing Otherwise. Journal of Public Pedagogies, 4, 127-139. http://www.publicpedagogies.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/12-Neimanis.pdf