Art and the sensorial imagination of the ‘unseen’

van Boeckel, J. (Speaker)

Art & Sustainability

Activiteit: Invited talk

Description

Our relationships with the more-than-human world are always somewhat incomplete as they are partially based on our state of awareness of what reaches us through our doors of perception. Only a limited part of what is “out there” in front of us, registers in our brain. We tend to only notice what we consider worthwhile paying attention to. This “becoming aware” of presences of nonhuman others shifts in time, as we continuously move our bodies through space. Goethe was one of the first in the Western world who understood that our “exact sensorial perception” of natural phenomena, needs to be complemented by “’exact sensorial imagination”. Moreover, we should appreciate understandings stemming from our intuition, to be able to relate more fully also to what is not there, or not yet there. Perhaps, such an artful empiricism is all the more relevant and urgent in our time and age, to develop and further nourish a sense of connection with the “underworld” – the myriad life forms and vibrant non-living matter below our feet – indeed, the very focus of this Biotoopia seminar.
In my presentation I looked into ways in which art can help us relate to the unseen, the unfolding, the emergent, so that our understandings of our shared lifeworld become not only richer, deeper layered, but also more appreciative of its infinite complexity.