Reimagining Work: Poietic Practices of Invisible Labour
Clio Van Aerde
2022-2024
Considering the urgency to alter current forms of human and more-than-human relations, especially in light of the climate crisis, Sealing Practice unpacks and disassembles human and more-than-human dualisms, anthropocentrisms and hierarchies. It understands these interrelations as fluid, horizontal, interlinked and with a high potential for co-making, especially in art practice. Through a rhizomatic-tensegritic-assemblage-hydrofeminist lens, Sealing practice works with various somatic practices, particularly ones that focus on fascia and motor imagery,
as well as liminal beings and things, such as the seal, shaman and fender. This undertaking is carried by a marine vocabulary and humour and absurdism are interwoven throughout to provide refuge from the heaviness of the environmental disquiet present. In addition, the more-than-human is perceived as an active collaborator in art-making, entering this research via the method of being-looked-at, participating not only in a finalised work but also in the making process. The Sealing Practice thus asks: to what extent is it possible to interweave the human and more-than-human through somatic means focusing on fascia? How can creatures and materials of in-betweenness aid in bridging the binary between the human and more-than-human? And how can humour and absurdism provide alternative entry points to approaching humancentric notions regarding the more-than-human? Sealing Practice has brought forward new questions regarding care and ethics towards the more-than-human and begun to unpack somatic and imaginary
potential for interweaving while reintroducing the membrane as a valuable mechanism in connection. Finally, this practice originated speculative absurdism as a method for performance-making, dismantling, through fictitious and absurdist means, existing human and more-than-human relations.