PhD Research Project: Abstract Geology - Critically Engaged Fine Art Practices of the post human within a new geologic era

This practice led Fine Art studentship is offered in the context of trans disciplinary engagement with the Anthropocene (or proposition that the impact of humanity upon the Earth’s ecosystems has triggered a new terrestrial epoch) and the ‘geological turn’ within contemporary thought that this has prompted. 

A preoccupation with surface might be said to have characterised 19th century geographies of expansion and colonialism and the aerial - visual technologies of surveillance etc. – to form the vector of the 20th. The Anthropocene demands engagement with depth – mining, extraction, fracking, undersea prospecting, fossil fuel economies and the collapse of visual distance and propulsion towards new tactile imaginaries to which this gives rise. 

This studentship will explore appropriate strategies and vocabularies for formulating new critically engaged fine art practices of the Earth and addressing the material legacy of the human in geologic terms. It will compliment and gain from investigations being conducted by Fine Art staff affiliated to the new ‘Cultural Negotiation of Science’ research group, along with the extensive external networks with which they are affiliated, as well as cross faculty enquiry into different constructions and representations of landscape. 

Additional benefits include attachment to the innovative BxNU Institute of Contemporary Art (in partnership with the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art) and by negotiation access to Geographic /Architectural expertise, as related to the Built and Natural Environment, within the Faculty of Engineering and Environment. 

Potential areas of investigation include but are not limited to: 

• Post Human/Post Nature - political / physical geographies 

• Nature as event / activations of geologic materiality 

• Socio/physical morphologies 

• Dynamic earth processes and political formations. 

• Landscapes of the Anthropocene 

• The legacies of Land Art 

• Geo/Aesthetics

I have just finished a three year teaching job in a university and if my experience is anything to go by this torturing of the English language appears to be standard practice. Heaven knows what students are supposed to make of it. Whilst I am in principle against the death penalty I would be prepared to make an exception for trafficking in this sort of drivel.