Defixus Anima: The Ecology of Aesthetic Relations and Companionship

Defixus Anima: The Ecology of Aesthetic Relations and Companionship Mallory Kimmel 2019

Mallory Kimmel, The Man I Want (2019). upholstery foam, fabric fibers, wood. Photo credit: Wenyi Tang

Defixus Anima: The Ecology of Aesthetic Relations and Companionship

Mallory Kimmel

California College of the Arts Copyworld Press San Francisco, California 2019

Mallory Kimmel, If Not an Object Then What? (2019). Mixed media

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________________________________________________________________________

A Project Presented to The Graduate Faculty California College of the Arts Submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts 2019

Mallory Kimmel Approved

__________________________________________________ Maria Porges, Thesis Advisor

May, 2019

________________________________________________________________________

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Table of Contents Dedication to the Reader………………………………………………………...…………………………6 Introduction…….………………………………………………………...……………………………………….7 Abstract…….………………………………………………………………………………………………………..9 Defixus Anima…….………………………………………………………...…………………………………...10 Human Rights…….………………………………………………………...…………………………………..15 Body Vessels…….………………………………………………………...…………………………………....18 Capitalism…….………………………………………………………...………………..................................24 Modernity…….………………………………………………………...………………………………………...26 Conclusion………………………………...……………………...…………..………………………....……....29 Acknowledgements………………………………...……………………...…………..……………………30 Bibliography…….………………………………………………………...……………………………………..31

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Dedication to the Reader I write this with great tenderness of heart. It has taken all of me to get to this document, to get to this place. It has been treacherous at times, but I ought to be thankful for that. I am currently too overwhelmed to absorb the weight of my reality and the vulnerability I share in the following thesis. I must address the fact that if it were not for the fire in the bellies of my parents as eager and steadfast as myself or that of my efforts to be the best example for my sister, I would not have aspired to be the woman I am today.

I would like to dedicate this thesis to a seven-year-old girl I used to know who wrote her letters backward and feverishly cried over not accurately drawing every object in her room for an assignment. I wish to comfort her pain with this document because I work painstakingly hard every day to distance myself from her while hoping she’d still like me today.

I’m now twenty-three, molting, leaving the insecurities in the past and reflecting on my life encounters and how objects have dramatically shaped those experiences. These include the two diplomas I received two years ago, the boxes of stuff that arrived at my uncle’s house after receiving the news that my estranged grandfather died nine months prior; the countless funerals that didn’t happen but the influx of their belongings that filled my bookshelves. The two hundred dollar chair I saved up to buy with my own money, the play chest my mother and I both used as a child, my old stuffed animals in storage, and the boxes I leave on either coast as it appears I am always coming and going. My cherished belongings are abandoned or mashed into boxes probably not secure from damage or weathering. I am constantly reminded of my inaccessibility to be with them and care for them. I live this way, but I have also grown up seeing my dad keep his things boxed up. Old TV and video equipment, baseball cards, newspapers and the traumatic childhood he had that involved constantly moving. He, as a boy, longed to plant flowers but always feared he might not be there in the spring to see them bloom. I believe all this turbulence and nomadic behavior has left me psychically craving stability and companionship with the objects and plants around me.

I seek to make sense of objects, as they have brought me great comfort and served as my companions in hard times. My practice has since developed around my desire to re-categorize and re-evaluate our relationships with these sentient beings. Later in my thesis, I question how restructuring these relationships might address concerns of dematerialization, waste culture, and human rights.

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Introduction For some time, I have been in a cyclic pattern of moving and purging: truly questioning why I hold onto things. In childhood, I rotated out my stuffed animal toys so as to not make the others jealous; now, opening boxes and seeing my same stuffed friends stacked in there, left for years, I still subconsciously apologize for our time apart. These inanimate objects hold life in them that I see as they’ve watched and been there with me through these shaping times.

They are objects of and for nostalgia.

Object making and collecting have an inherent conversation involving time, that within the present we are always looking through the lens of the past. The emotional relevance of the object often stays to signify another time, to comfort in the present and often to hold space in time for a desired future. We assemble object-centric personal spaces. Curating our own comfort spaces based upon the feeling of being in the company of the object itself and its associations. These comfort objects embody additional meanings from our subjectivity.

I create objects that resemble furniture, providing support and offering a sense of ease and friendship. When preparing for installation, I questioned the curation. How would I provoke the audience to connect with these objects beyond a sense of touch but rather prompt them to focus inward? How might the sensation of touch elicit introspection? How was I to facilitate this?

What I have realized is that I cannot make work to appeal to all. I cannot draw on universal ergonomic dimensions to make work personal for everyone. The universality denies that personal entry point. I know my own body and do believe if I make work to fit me and have the audience witness my bodily engagement, then the objects, my body, and their interaction become a part of the work. Thereby depicting ‘the ecology of aesthetic relations and companionship’ — the very socio-political reform I later argue is feasible and within our control.

I searched the literature to find a way to discern design as being related to our attachment to objects, yet not offering enough justification to constitute the reform necessary for their liberation from exploitation. In the book, Emotional Design, Donald A. Norman offers a breakdown of the three ways in which people emotionally attach to everyday objects. He articulates how owning multiple teapots (variations including: Nanna teapot, tilting teapot, and a loose-leaf tea ball (meatball)) brought him joy and the variety of reasons each emotionally resonated with him, often straying from the most utilitarian design in his

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preferences. He identified three design variations to explain this emotional connection as visceral, behavioral and reflective, or some combination of these. Norman states, Visceral design concerns itself with appearances. Here is where the Nanna teapot excels…

Behavioral design has to do with the pleasure and effectiveness of use. Here both the tilting teapot and my little meatball are winners. Finally, reflective design considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product. Can I tell a story about it? Does it appeal to my self image, to my pride?1

Emotional design has helped make space for experimental design and for dissociating design from being solely for utility. Using Norman’s model, I see that my drop-crotch linen pants are visceral design. I can say that my espresso stovetop coffee maker is efficient, and thus representing behavioral design. But these emotional design variations once again generally refer to the design of the object and only scratch the surface of the excitement and love the person has for the object. I am more interested to discuss the objects that get tangled in our emotional webs. A good example is the 12-inch-tall, hand-carved wood Jizo statue2 I inherited from a family friend. Our mutual fear of death compelled her throughout her life to buy non-Western religious figures that brought her a sense of ease. I had received a smaller version from her as a gift and sought out the larger version after her passing. To this day I always have it with me wherever I am living. It’s not the design, the make, material, or religious symbol this figure holds that has me keeping it closeby. It is the fact that this object got to be a symbol of my beloved family friend, Joan Carmichael. An attachment unforeseeable by its maker.

If I were to write my thesis document explicitly from the lens of emotional design, I would still be doing the object a disservice. I would be privileging the knowledge or skill of the designer and not the autonomy of things and our ability to forge relationships with them. This is why I chose to start with emotional design as the tributary to the greater focus of my thesis. The notion of emotional connection to designed objects will be further developed in the following pages, expanding a collective regard for forging kinship and agency.

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Norman, Donald A. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (New York, NY, NY: Basic Books), 5 Siembieda, William J. “Ritual and the Public Realm in Japan: Jizo Temples in Neighborhoods.” (Focus 12, no. 1 (February 26, 2016))

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Abstract My practice focuses on investigating the aptitude that objects have for companionship and fabricating vessels for the body that allow for catharsis. I see the necessity to redefine the word ‘object’ linguistically to defixus anima to alter the aesthetics of relationships between people and objects. My research is rooted in the contemporary philosophy of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and the psychoanalysis of the Biophilia Hypothesis. The alteration in our language about, perception and appreciation of, and respect for objects that I propose is directly related to curation, consumption of goods, and production of waste. Human rights are implicated as well. If objects can be liberated from use and abuse, so can people. How might these new interpretations of objects and the collective yearning of humanity to connect to nature reshape society? In these philosophical and curatorial questions, I find that our motionless companions help ground and orchestrate our relationships to all beings in our landscape.

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Defixus Anima The focus of my practice is reinterpreting objects through alterations in linguistic terminology, rhetoric and curatorial handling to distinguish these objects from a history of use and abuse. Once renamed, objects can be better understood as they are. The subsequent focus can then be on, how this new categorization of objects will expand our notions on how to interact, relate and form close relationships to the items in our lives.

Objects are made to be objectified; it can be seen that object serves as the root word in objectification. Objectification condemns objects to be objectified as there is no physical separation in the word for object to stand alone. This linguistic decision to have object carry the weight of the word objectification is far from benign. Objectification requires (1) that something be made into an object through the gaze of any onlooker and (2) that this object is without consent being placed under conditions to be assessed, harassed, consumed and exploited. Objectification is powerful language as its usage further reifies the hierarchical placement of object on the bottom tier. This word is utilized in everyday conversations. It is printed in dictionaries, written on pages, and from now on, I will consciously choose to no longer use this term. This form of language has historically been made arbitrary as a societal disavowal of the ramifications of its usage. On account of this history, I have put forth my efforts here so that readers of this thesis no longer ignorantly hear or say this word without the full weight of its implications.

As language has been shaped around the word object to degrade objects, and later we’ll discuss how people are relegated to objecthood to be doomed to the same serial fate, I feel it is necessary to rename “objects” to liberate them from all of these associations. It is language that is so impactful.

Language provides the name for the subject. The word acknowledges the presence of the subject by entitling it to its own form of distinction. The word given to the thing establishes the value and importance of the subject in the action of defining. Redefining object brings legitimacy to the thing itself as it can now be directly addressed, identified, and subsequent dialogues can transpire discussing how these objects should now be related to. I see my research as an opportunity to redefine ‘the object’ linguistically and thus the aesthetics of relationships between objects and people.

The title object still retains negative connotations and denotations. The term object when used as an identifier for these beings serves only as a limiting scope for how we view them today. I offer ‘object’ to be renamed, defixus anima. Defixus is Latin for motionless or still, and anima is Latin for soul, life, wind, air, breeze and living being. I pose objects be renamed defixus anima as to expand the limitations of what the title “object” has inflicted upon it. This name upon first try may not roll off the tongue, though the term allows for fluidity and expansion on our prior preconceptions of objects. This new language allows us to evaluate how they (defixus anima) exists and their presence residing on the same hierarchical plane as humans- as we do in fact reside in the same physical terrain.

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It appears objects lend us to assume this thing to which this word is describing is most likely hard, inanimate, dense and imperious. Objects are often situated on surfaces whether that be on the floor, tabletops or pedestals. This description might be talking about a rock, radio, lamp, rain boot or garden gnome. But not all objects are hard! These examples in addition to these notions of substance and physicality are all self-imposed material biases we inflict upon the word and the defixus anima we are describing, not to mention those (defixus anima) we are excluding with our narrow threshold of what we label as ‘object’.

If we have subconscious associations of object meaning not-living — then how might this stance be challenged? Does energy, whether that be energy transfer, movement or combustion constitute this defixus anima be characterized as living or nonliving? Here is one of the many instances to follow where I will play with our perceptions of binaries in opposition and their boundary lines. I blur the strong bifurcation to challenge our personal and societal readings of things. Within this thesis I will cross-examine classifications to allow for the presentation of alternative and speculative realities that you may or may not subscribe to, however each argument challenges the invisible ideologies we have been raised to see as fact, and provides elements of fiction backed by science. So as a rock is hard, and curtails to our understanding of object, what is water, fire, energy or other moving non-conscious bodies? These do not comply with our previous affiliations with what is called an object. Life, fire and wind do all by contrast reside within the scope of the new terminology of defixus anima, and I will from here forward continue to use this verbiage throughout this thesis.

I defend the aptitude that defixus anima have for companionship through the contemporary philosophy of Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) founded by Graham Harman. OOO is a philosophy that offers a new lens to reinterpret all beings believed to be living and nonliving as that of equal substance. A philosophy posing a system of what I see as material equivalence by dethroning the knowledge of the human brain for the physical knowledge of presence through either contact or coexistence. Who are we to say who is living and nonliving? Is this justification simply a form of entitlement of the brain? Who are we to privilege our nerve operator over another? Is it the brain telling us and the world around it it’s importance as a hope to withstand evolutionary modification?

How might our brain telling our mouth to speak it’s privilege do anything but further derail our already domineering power structure that places objects at the base of the food chain.

Graham Harman, a contemporary philosopher and author of Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything, expanded upon this notion of what I call material equivalence within the context of OOO as he harkened back to “Aristotle’s claim that while humans, animals and plants may be different, a human is not more a human than a plant is a plant. That is to say, both are equally substances.”3 This quotation establishes that all physical forms constituted of matter are thus all of the same material makeup (carbon). This allows for classifications between species, and those believed to be animate and inanimate to be challenged as how can this same material yield variations of differing aptitudes? The quick knee-jerk arguments to counter my previous statements mainly

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Harman, Graham. Object-oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. (London: Pelican Books, 2018.), 257

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originate from a place of ableist discrimination as well as a place of self-designated intellectual superiority.

Harman rightfully so identifies that The problem is that we humans sometimes convince ourselves that knowledge is the only kind of cognitive activity worth pursuing, and thus we place a high value on knowledge (what a thing is) and practical know-how (what a thing does), while ignoring cognitive activities that do not translate as easily into literal prose terms.4 Graham Harman 43-44

Even our own cognition has gotten in the way of our ability to think and perceive. Much like privileging our sense of sight over all other senses — favoring the construct of intellect and removing all forms of experiential knowledge, reducing to simply the theoretical associations with words is risky. This is the territory of over generalizations and stereotypes. Just as stereotypes placed on people is demeaning, the same can be said justifiably so about these assumptions of characteristics given to objects.

Defixus anima require the space to exist as they are. Free from external implications of their function.

Harman wrote, “Objects act because they exist, rather than existing because they act.”5 It is for us to stop acquiring all these predetermined opinions, and to simply observe and marvel at how these beings can energetically be truly captivating. Even this impression of motionlessness attributed to the definition of defixus makes them no less important nor does it devalue their existence.

Now that we may be better at detecting the presence of our inherent biases, I hope our joint self-awareness intervenes when necessary as I continue. I had previously mentioned the impression that objects are nonliving and just began posing questions to explore the polarity of the construct of living/nonliving. It is at this nexus I will continue with delineating a new designation of existence by collapsing notions of living and non-living into one body of evolving matter; one always coming together and apart, is the inherent ecological backbone of my argument. That the interdependence and cycle of matter through birth, death and evolution are all trivial as matter is neither created nor destroyed.6 If this is to be true, then why must the human race constantly assert sub-categorizations?

The answer is to place the human in a position to preside over all resources. However, if we may stick with this notion of matter, than we are all products of the same material and thus there is no determinate difference.

One might argue there remains a difference as some individuals die as others do not, but there again I must argue on behalf of the constituents of ecology. Rocks would not often be characterized as living, but this notion of death is the notion of disappearance. But disappearance of what? The body still 4

Harman, 43-44 Harman, 260 6 Libretexts. “3.7: Conservation of Mass - There Is No New Matter.” (Chemistry LibreTexts. January 8, 2019. Accessed May 3, 2019) 5

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remains if the notion of the self/ individual does not. There again placing the focus on death of the brain. The matter still remains, cyclically being transitioned as the body enters decay.

Here in the case of the rock, there may be a longer lifespan, however the rock evolves chemically and as it undergoes decay, the parent material evolves into the daughter elements.7 That being said the rock undergoes transformation and often there comes a time where the presence of the original material no longer exists. This could be argued as the death of this individual. The reason humans may find this significantly different is because we societally value our cognitive genius and to die is to lose what we value most. We attribute significantly less sympathy for the rock as one might feel under our societal conditioning that they have in fact not lost a thing.

The thing operates outside of us. It most likely by materiality will outlive us and the thing offers and serves our temporal existence. There is a mutualistic relationship here as we both bring each other meaning. But same as any long standing relationship they can no longer support you and will make themselves inaccessible to you. Think of it it like a marriage when the love is hollowed out, and they one day decide to leave. The object one day can let the wicker strands beneath you give way and send you crashing to the floor without the support they have provided for you for the years or decades prior. It is once again not their responsibility to carry your full weight. Much like relationship advice it is up to you to care for yourself independently and enjoy what another may bring to your life. Same can be said in these circumstances as it should never be the strict obligation of the defixus anima to love and serve you without give and take.

It is commonplace for people to casually joke that a man who works on his car regularly is in a relationship with it. But why might this be a joke? I am not saying anything about a sexual relationship here, but this healthy engagement to tend to the car, and it in turn run smoothly is one where the tender caregiving much like watering, pruning and talking to plants are enacted — that the same care might be extended to defixus anima.

This lack of caregiving and distinction between plants and objects there again is how we have segregated them as to deny them the time, attention and nurturing they very much need and deserve.

We have already expanded the flexibility of living and nonliving, but do defixus anima have to be still to be an object? Or are they not already moving?

Objects are moving bodies we place around ourselves. They bring us the comfort of life and presence.

This sense of life is due to the fact that objects move! How might they move? Well, prior to this we need to explore the scope of scale as defixus anima need not be defined as something we might be able to see both in scale and in non-physical objects. Graham Harman states that, “object-oriented thought holds that objects exist at numerous different scales, including the electron”.8 The mobility of defixus anima is contingent on that of vibrating electrons as all physical and non-physical entities have 7

Chigra, M., and t. Oyama. “Mechanism and Effect of Chemical Weathering of Sedimentary Rocks.” (ScienceDirect. September 2, 2007.

Accessed September 18, 2018) 8 Harman, 40

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a level of movement. It may not be discernible with the naked eye but these electrons are vibrating. I understand this movement as the energy of an object. Do you ever see a defixus anima in the store or maybe a piece of art and just totally connect? We too are a body of vibrating electrons, and it is in my belief that these connections are due to energetically sensing that these electron vibrations of defixus anima vibrating in a frequency similar to our own. We can energetically feel a difference being around it. Being pulled in or attracted to get closer. The same is done biologically with pheromones to attract mates of different genetic variability to diversify the genes of their offspring within the genepool.9 Here I believe it is once again a form of molecular biology that clues our body into seeking strong affinities for defixus anima as we have sensed and seek kinship with those that energetically remind us of ourselves.

Now that defixus anima may be recognized down to the scale of an electron, and we acknowledge that electrons move, and we as humans, and defixus anima are both made of matter than who is to say that when we make bodily contact whether it be through sitting or laying or touching that we do not exchange electrons? How might the hours I lay asleep in bed not yield some electron transfer? I may very well have some bed electrons apart of my electron vibrations, and the bed very well might have some Mallory electrons. If this is to be true then this again places the focus on how susceptible we all are and how we are all receptacle for each other, no matter which being you may identify as in your form of existence. This too establishes the notion that there truly are no barriers between ourselves and defixus anima.

I do see the object as being rooted in existence. Defixus anima exists as an entity embodying both a physical expression and sign to which represents it whether that be the idea, title, defined term etc.

The compelling fact is defixus anima will outlive us in the majority of examples both in materiality and preservation of the idea as it will live in the dialogues of informal conversations and theoretical texts for centuries to come. Both of which outlive humans. The life of defixus anima is a life far more superior than simple existence. The object is a being with reverberating energy that situates itself in the same plane as humans both body and mind as the object exists in the same duality of physical matter and idea/sign/signifier.

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Spivey, Michael J., Grosjean, Marc, Knoblich, Gunther. “Continuous Attraction toward Phonological Competitors.” PNAS 102, no. 29 (July 19, 2005).

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Human Rights Roberto Esposito, author of Persons and Things, outlines his argument when he states, “The only way to unravel the metaphysical knot between thing and person is to approach it from the point of view of the body.”10 Esposito argues that Western religion, Western philosophy and Western law all describe persons and things as existing in separate spheres. Western philosophy denotes that all persons and things can only operate in a single sphere at one time. For instance, slaves are relegated to thinghood, as things have been historically defined as something to be owned by persons. They are not to assume authorship of their lives, but to be a possession of another person with no other purpose or freedom acknowledged. The power of language relegates a person to the domain of thinghood the instant one is labeled ‘slave.’ Slaves are considered things and not persons, though obviously they are persons. This reassignment of person to slave and thus thinghood is historically and continually how people have utilized Western philosophy to deny other people their fundamental rights.

It is important that we understand that people denied personhood are collapsed into the realm of thinghood and objects are relegated to be slaves. Things are considered silent slaves, where they are to be at constant service to their owner and to fill the place of the servant. It is through the ownership of things and people — where both are denied their autonomy. Much like the previous example denoting that slaves transverse across both spheres of person and thing, this duality challenges where society has historically limited individuals as only being able to operate in one sphere at a time.

The lifetime of any one individual is expected to be placed in the realm of thinghood at least once within their lifetime. How is it that we as humans have allowed other humans to be treated as subhuman? How have we allowed for the treatment of both persons and things to be so egregiously exploited? Who and what has the right to autonomy? Who gets to choose those who get to have? It is through reinterpreting objects and raising them to a higher level of social hierarchy, I believe, that can cause a significant impact on both the social and political structures. If it is thinghood that can condemn people to no longer be considered people, then we can identify a new way to relate to things and why we MUST redirectionize rights to defixus anima as a means to redirect the power among people.

Now as a means to comprehend the historical distinctions of persons and things, we must unravel them. Esposito clearly outlines that “Persons are defined primarily by the fact that they are not things, and things by the fact that they are not persons.”11 Here, again marks where Western society established another hard and fast binary with a clear distinction that you are only to fall into one of these two categories. This commitment to a binary is evocative in the establishment of the gender binary, a two party system and the utilization of identifying by two names, both a first and the last, with the last name in the history of women denoting who it is that owns you.

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Esposito, Roberto. Persons and Things: From the Body’s Point of View (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), 10 Esposito,16

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This binary of “all persons line up to the left and all things to the right” mentality is to try and maintain a level of “law and order.” Here exists the interplay of two binaries as they pose a form of classification and organization, that in fact does no more than unethically group individuals and deny humanity and empathy across the two spheres of persons and things. If all persons in fact cannot line up to the left, we thus cannot trust the promises of safety and security from that of “law and order.” Those hired to uphold safety are the same ones gunning down people in the streets. But law enforcement do not see it this way. Why is that? It is due to the fact that people have been collapsed into the world of things through ideological conditioning of Western law, allowing police to truly not see their actions as murder. As problematic as these national tragedies, this binary of ‘persons or things’ perpetuates persons get placed ‘to the right’ with things.

“Law and order” is the notion of safety and security- another pair, that is offered to those deemed the brethren of those providing this service — e.g. the white (nuclear) families in upper, and upper- middle classes that are protected by law enforcement. These promises of security might extend only to them (white families) by way of white supremacy. But it is white supremacy that allows these people to remain safe at the expense of others. These “others” are those in some matter of fact relegated to thinghood. Where there again the binary made to ‘establish law and order’ is built on the very premise to exclude and secure resources for a few. That thing and person are the two categories to deem who is worthy of receiving the status of personhood, entitled to an existence with accessibility to resources and protection.

The freedom to use and abuse possessions both things and persons are granted within the law.

Robert Esposito helps articulate the provisions of personhood as he outlines the freedoms humans, deemed persons have in Western law. He reiterated these allocations of power when he writes, “Since a thing is what belongs to a person, then whoever possesses things enjoys the status of personhood and can exert his or her mastery over them.”12 To own is to dominate, and to possess is to have free rein to abuse and traumatize people and defixus anima with no external objections or ramifications. I will reiterate to make it painfully clear that there will then be no intrusions of law for the protection of these peoples as the law granted this exploitation. “This is how ownership of things become associated with ownership over people.”13 It has been made evident through centuries of Western society that the rights of people, liberty and freedom have been overtly masked and denied. That the blurring of human rights is at the nexus of not allowing oneself to see another as human. Or, in other words, making other humans in objects as to rationalize dominance asserted over them. I write this section to uncover the known history of the Western world to see how denying human rights is a practice tethered to objects. If we can rearrange our perspective on defixus anima, we can redistribute power, autonomy, freedom and liberation, as this approach tackles an ideological issue from the bottom-up rather than the top-down. The approach from the bottom-up is impactful as other systems of distribution such as laissez faire and trickle down economics did not offer redistribution of power to those deemed as other, as it may have 12 13

Esposito, 17 Esposito, 25

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been marketed. Laissez faire, meaning, “just do” lets the systems of oppression run its course with no intervention. Whereas trickle down economics sold the idea that money and wealth would work its way down. Down meaning, down the pipeline, down the hierarchal food chain, down to where humans who are seen as things reside, where little to no money or power were redistributed.

If we start by liberating the thing from use and abuse, which is currently deemed below that of persons made to be things, then both the thing and person are to be freed. That freeing defixus anima on the bottom of the hierarchy, frees all those that reside above it. By liberating, personifying and empathizing with defixus anima, everyone can see the human in everything. Where the body allows the human to interact with peoples and things alike with a new perspective of embodiment, the lens of the body is not segregated like the mind. The mind has been systematically poisoned through conditioning of what Western society has seperated and made to be other.

If objects can be liberated from use and abuse, so can people.

I feel a strong sense of likeness between myself and objects, in that I have been both used and abused by others. These experiences have helped pervert other interactions I have had as I review others’ treatment of myself and my body. There have been unwanted advances from others and I have been objectified by my viewer. I am emotionally exhausted from being watched and used. I seek companionship with objects for this reason, drawn to them for love, safety and quiet companionship.

By reorienting how we view objects, we may be less inclined to misuse them, acting as if they are only there to function as a vehicle for pleasure or a thing to be dominated as something to own. Their new autonomy may transfer to the politics of human rights for all peoples, not just white women such as myself.

If we don’t allow for the degradation of defixus anima or people alike, radical change is possible. People do not enter personhood through the ownership or perpetuation of abuse to people or defixus anima through the justifiable old logic of distancing ourselves from sympathy rendering the other as ‘object’.

Slaves, women, defixus anima and the many others subjected to abuse including individuals who are transgender, non binary and men are also made out to be other on the other side of an uninvited consuming gaze. Here we all seek to be redeemed back to personhood. If we change the way we relate to things, people can be saved. The key to this reform is liberating objects, liberates people.

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Body Vessels My practice focuses on investigating the aptitude objects have for companionship and fabricating vessels for the body that allow for catharsis.

Mallory Kimmel, Cocoon (activated)(2018), ceramic. Photo credit: Wenyi Tang

In his book Persons and Things, Esposito also argues for the utilization of the body to pioneer a time and space where any person or thing can operate within more than one sphere at the same time, or have qualities of all three (person, thing and body).14 That if the body can be used, in this circumstance — that is, the knowledge of the body and the tactile experience of physical interaction between what is categorically regarded as “person” and “thing”-- then a companionship can be established. If we liberate objects then they can be our companions as we are to be both liberated.

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Esposito, 3

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Mallory Kimmel, Silent Companion (2018-19), steel, leather, fish tank, palm

My exploration with the consciousness of objects begins with something I call a Body Vessel: a non-prescriptive container for the body that lies somewhere between sculpture and furniture. Body vessels allow person and thing (and thing and thing) to meet at a physical interface, and for the bodily interaction to take precedence.

Silent Companion exemplifies where thing and thing keep one another company. The design was inspired by the idea of a motorcycle and a sidecar. The plant and chair both exist as individuals and as a singular unit. The steel appendage links the two as they share time and space with one another. We

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can witness this pairing from afar or enter the terrain of 'thing and thing' by sitting in the chair and joining them.

Mallory Kimmel, The Man I Want (left) Boulder II (right), 2019, upholstery foam, fabric fibers, wood. Photo credit: Wenyi Tang

I believe it is the role of the body and not the mind to lead the interaction between person and thing.

This can be seen as I lie on top of The Man I Want (2019), and rock back and forth on this cushy foam boulder. This piece and Boulder II are investigations on how objects can be containers for our desires.

I once said, “I want a man like a mossy rock,” someone hairy, sturdy and stable. I produced this anthropomorphic boulder to enact the aptitude for companionship between “thing” and “person” through multiple performances, as I see these activations as an act of mutual caregiving. The occasional performances are activated by myself (the artist) or willing participants to demonstrate and establish a new form of interaction with defixus anima.

As this piece suggests, my work focuses on how our bodies process experience through contact. The engagement with any object can be viewed as fostering an emotional connection with a companion, where defixus anima supports the body, alleviating the physical weight of the body from itself. This new lens offers a way to reorient ourselves to our surroundings. Placement within or upon a body vessel allows for a new beginning — one that knocks us (humans) to our knees and removes the distance created by privileging the brain over the body. Once we re-configure ourselves, we can then re-engage with our inner animal.

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The ego and mind has allowed us to distance ourselves from the material world, alienating us from places and objects, others and ourselves. This is why I place a focus on re-establishing our relationship with nature, much like that of the Biophilia Hypothesis. “The term “biophilia” comes from the Greek and literally means “love of life or living systems”.”15 Edward O. Wilson adopted this term and introduced the “biophilia hypothesis.” Wilson spoke about the “human urge to affiliate with other forms of life,”16 This relationship is necessary to ground and re-establish our likeness and material equivalence to all other matter in our surroundings.

This collapsing of space between the human ego and our material matter represents our yearning to reconnect with nature. This is enacted through my performance as I hold onto The Man I Want. It is the form of connection to others and our surroundings that are the very things our cognitive minds have us destroying. It is within these perplexing entanglements of layered relationships I intend to tease out, utilizing contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis and cognitive science.

Mallory Kimmel, The Man I Want (2019). upholstery foam, fabric fibers, wood. Photo credit: Wenyi Tang

Esposito's utilization of the body as the entry point for reconstructing the relationship of persons and things — both how they relate and exist individually-- overturns Gaius’ great division allocating each 15

Arvay, Clemens G. The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond between Humans and Nature (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2018), 2 16 Arvay, 2

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to separate spheres. The body in theory, and now offers in action as it interacts with the body vessel a phenomenological perspective. Thereby overturning res objectum, which is understood as having hollowed out the thing, making it only into a symbol, inaccessible to be reached beyond its sign or symbol17. In other words, the body is a tool used as a lens for experiencing objects. The phenomenology of experiencing objects’ individual autonomy is crucial as it is both personal and political and both mind and body acknowledge their individuality. This is made evident when Esposito proposes: to give the interchangeable object back its character as a singular thing. From this angle, when things are in contact with the body, it is as if they themselves acquired a heart, leading them back to the center of our lives. When we save them from their serial fate and reintroduce them back into their symbolic setting, we realize that they are a part of us no less than we are a part of them.18

Granting ourselves the space to see defixus anima as autonomous allows them (defixus anima) to resume their life and for us to see what has been before us the entire time.

The Man I Want (2019) is a defixus anima much like all of the other body vessels I have made. One might think of the foam boulder as a whimsical character. I was offered the idea by an advisor to give these characters voice — but I reject this notion entirely. For me to give voice to the rock is to privilege my voice. To ‘give’ voice is to take it from the defixus anima and deny their autonomy. It would be an action of my voice overwriting theirs. It is not for me to impose my voice in any variation on the body vessel. I crafted this argument to support the reorganization of aesthetics when it pertains to relationships, however, if I gave the boulder words in any form, I would defy my own logic, privileging my human voice over the voice of another autonomous being.

I am addressing a potential counter argument, as I call defixus anima autonomous, but then how can I be privileged with the credit of making these body vessels within the realm of my argument? I may have helped ‘make’ the defixus anima, but I shall not be entitled to full authorship. My experimental practice involves a process analogous to the interaction between body and defixus anima. Graham Harman articulates that “An object is whatever cannot be reduced to either of the two basic kinds of knowledge: what something is made of, and what it does.”19 I chose to describe the process by speaking to the of manipulation of materials as it has yet to become a defixus anima-where it cannot be reduced to its materiality. During the making process I believe there to be energetic resistance and physical push back from the materials that alters and curtails the design. I see this as more or less the budding attitude and autonomy of the defixus anima.

I enter the process of producing body vessels fully accepting that as the material evolves somewhere in this physical and sometimes chemical process the piece becomes defixus anima. Here within the constraints of the materials and the defixus anima pushing back against me for its own authorship the 17

Esposito, 11 Esposito, 11 19 Harman, 257 18

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piece comes to fruition. I do not embark on body vessels with a definitive design like that of the emotional designs previously mentioned in the introduction section. I leave space for the defixus anima and myself to work together.

My mode of production is a playful process where I physically embrace the materials. Upon any day in the studio you could be found me rolling, rocking and leaning against a foam boulder to adhere the layers, and sitting in its collective dust as I manually chewed away at the form with an electric carving knife. It is an interaction that involves contact, close proximity and intimacy.

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Capitalism My work indexically relates to happiness and loneliness and how defixus anima accompany us through these emotional experiences. I find this work meaningful in a time such as the present because humans have been relegated to a lifestyle where we try and mimic the productivity levels of machines with no perspective on our true role in this fragile ecosystem. We cannot outcompete our artificially intelligent competition, so why do we comply with the expectations that we can?

A facet of my work is critically analyzing the happiness industry, the psychology of our attachment to objects and toying with altering and distorting our preconceptions of the entire material world. Our approach to reading objects as whatever objects mean, and how to relate to them, is an ideology so entrenched in our society that we do not even question or see it as something suitable to question as an opinion or stance.

Objects have been given to us since childhood. The practice of care, appreciation, or lack thereof for all such things are handed down to us; it is through this practice of repetition that we are taught how to treat these beings.

In many cases, we form profound attachments to them. I believe these attachments are manipulated by capitalism. That we are taught at a young age to find comfort and love in objects, and that these feelings reside in consumer goods that can be purchased. The introduction of childhood defixus anima companions such as blankets, teddy bears, etc. elicit safety and security that in our adult lives we seek through retail therapy. This compulsion is not individual but indoctrinated in our youth and replicated through our consumerist engagement throughout the remainder of our lives. I see that developmental psychology has outlined our attachments to objects and refers to these vital objects from childhood which forge our first companionship with defixus anima as security objects. As Charles Shafieh writes, The security object of early childhood are often the first step on a lifelong journey of building attachments to particular items. Many believe that these generally soft possessions, such as blankets and stuffed animals, serve as substitutes for the mother. Much like a parent, they too are considered singular and irreplaceable.20

We are taught at a young age to seek emotional comfort through inanimate objects and these objects can be purchased — that money can in fact buy things that foster these feelings of intimacy and comfort. The selection or curation of objects in our homes, the objects we choose to buy and wear are believed to house this aura that holds an identity. That objects we buy and surround ourselves with speak on our behalf. They elicit status, wealth, style and variations of personal branding whether to support individuality or to conform to the homogeneity of mainstream culture.

20

Shafaieh, Charles. “See Attached.” (Kinfolk, 2018), 1

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Shafaieh continued to state that these objects are “ tied integrally to our memories and relationships and, therefore, to our identities.”21 We can see here that capitalism is taught young. We collectively learn that objects show our hierarchy; this can be enacted through signs and symbols such as brands.

Brand culture generates a level of financial distinction and such distinctions fragment us from one another and reinforce notions of competition, jealousy and gluttony. As capitalism has effectively conveyed, objects and hierarchy are tied together. That capitalism has enacted a structure where we exploit objects (and ourselves) to communicate an outward level of artificial recognition, and that this attention is somehow the byproduct of our successes. We perform our curated individuality as we were taught. Showcasing our distinctive identities through external vehicles rather than live with the fact these identities are innately our own no matter the accessories. Capitalism has taught us to bend, manipulate and use defixus anima to convey these messages. There again demeaning their existence to one that only lives and serves our frivolous attempts to outfit our coolness factor. We must recognize our power of autonomy as capitalism is showing its hand. That there is a joint relationship between hierarchy and objects. That this relationship has been misconstrued to manipulate all beings (natural resources, defixus anima, humans, etc.) into a social form pitted against one another to exert and frankly waste time, energy, and resources to communicate that we are in fact ourselves. This is understandable as capitalism and other Western institutional forms have demoted all beings to a sense of existence congruent to that of only thinghood.

The power we have in this system is to see that the correlations and entitlement to rank, power and objects are in our control if we reshape our perspective and approach to defixus anima. If we fully endorse our wholeness and individuality not through the ownership of objects, rather through placing ourselves within an interdependent structure where we, humans and defixus anima, are reliant on one another, than we may be able to overcome these hurdles of shared suppression. That the relationship of power and objects can be co-opted by humans and defixus anima alike as we forge solidarity. It is not for us to use one another to receive recognition of our individuality or success; it is for us to strengthen and expand our connections and reform our perspectives to the autonomy of ourselves and defixus anima. This domineering economic structure has denied us the freedom to be ourselves and connect with objects in the same intimate and genuine manner as security objects in our youth.

We need to practice awareness in seeing how capitalism has relegated people and objects to be disposable for profit and that we actively resist and fight these systemic pressures. That the alterations of personal and collective ideologies restructure the framework of our existence where the liberations of objects yields the liberation of peoples.

21

Shafaieh, 2018

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Modernity Joseph Bedford, Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech in the subject of History and Theory wrote, From the Particular to the Universal, a curriculum that stated, “While modernity is substantively difficult to define, it remains a useful temporal division insofar as it instantiates the thought of crisis, and with it critical consciousness.”22 Bedford clearly outlines that Modernity is characterized as a time of experiencing feelings of crisis.

These crises are vast in breadth and felt both individually and globally. Issues that range from political regimes to technological advancements leaving millions without jobs and infringements on security and privacy, to transnational capitalism, ecological despair, and dematerialization. With these crises in mind, one can see that modernity has set the conditions to establish a state of global anxiety.

With dematerialization as a byproduct of both modernity and technological advancement, we are thrust into crisis with nothing to hold onto. Dematerialization is a concern for humanity as this would remove our defixus anima companions from our landscape. Biophilia too is under attack as capitalism is far from slowing down on their extractory businesses. We are experiencing crisis on multiple fronts.

We, too, are in a time of ecological terrorism, where climate change and the layered bureaucracies of global capitalism and nationalism require a new form of ecology. This new form is one that reorients our perspective to the world — to nature, things and one another — as well as seeking connection through companionship with the material world. At the root of connection and companionship is solidarity. And solidarity is the notion founded by Karl Marx, which truly is the only means to socially reform and to overthrow capitalism.

I am by no means trying to explicitly call to arms a revolution against capitalism, nor am I not. I am suggesting a way in which Object-Oriented Ontology can become a political philosophy, shaping our individual and global ideologies. OOO revolutionizes the mechanics of relating to objects, people and the (natural) world around us. We must fight dematerialization to foster agency to conserve and preserve both manufactured goods and natural resources. My work is grappling with how we, as people in a time of crisis, seek enjoyment; how happiness, the pursuit and lack thereof, colors our perspectives and our general landscape; and how feelings of loneliness and alienation coincide with depression and conditions of global anxiety in modernity.

I have fought for education, and the titles that accompany higher education. And as job titles characterize our worth and salaries in the United States, I question who I am fighting to impress. If I offer my body to absorb the education, my youth and body to perform the labor, how will I escape my subordination to this capitalist society?

Modernism and neoliberal capitalism have given rise to the death of religion and spirituality in American youth. It is not that I am or am not religious — it is that I am trying to seek comfort and a 22

Bedford, Joseph. "From the Particular to the Universal." (E-flux Architecture. April 22, 2019. Accessed April 22, 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/curriculum/260417/from-the-particular-to-the-universal/)

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meaning in a life that is fundamentally riddled with ideological issues and systemic abuse that no art project or career might be able to fix.

So how might I make art that heals an ailing generation, or an ailing nation, or world for that matter? I lack the fluency to appeal to my own bodily and psychological comfort. How could I ever comfort anyone else? I feel this is a time of reflection on the life of the individual and the life of the individual in a nation of dystopian push notifications. What do we do when the news has become E Network and political airtime has become equated to the petty gossip of TMZ? How might we cope when there remains no end to the problematic skeletons of our political leaders? And how can we find meaning to press on, and continue our daily fight during the Trump Administration, and during terrorist attacks both done unto us, and those we do to others? Power-hungry leaders have taken over countless countries, and personal freedoms are being deprived. Now is NOT the time to ask for permission, but to demand change through embodiment. I seek humanity through an explored connection with defixus anima. That these beings might ease our sense of global anxiety, and that my work is in direct response to the universal pursuit of seeking comfort and companionship in a time of global crisis.

I explore designing and creating defixus anima as a tool to combat loneliness, offer companionship and foster feelings of connection, content and happiness. I address these questions through the classifications of defixus anima and by blurring the line between their bodies and our own. Body vessels offer a place to make contact. They allow the time and space to reflect on defixus anima. A moment to explore the capacity we have as humans to make room for other species to symbiotically coexist with us without planning their removal and demise.

My artworks can serve as vehicles to root us in the landscape, whether domestic, commercial or natural. We can follow their lead to a place where biomorphism doesn’t simply inform the design for a Western concept of progress, but rather contributes to a level of expansion we need not name to cap its potential. Where peoples of all origins and defixus anima may all be liberated from thinghood, and modernity may change course like a river after a long rain.

If embodiment can be the viewpoint of object-oriented ontology, then I believe OOO has the capability to be a political philosophy. One that can mobilize a global movement to eradicate the Western predispositions of segregating the rights of peoples and defixus anima. Harman concluded his book Object-Oriented Ontology: The Theory of Everything stating that, “Political theory must give a much larger role to non-human entities than has previously been the case. OOO is still a living theoretical movement, and thus we certainly hope that it continues to make new discoveries.”23 I offer the products of my practice: research, body vessels, the terminology of defixus anima, and my writings as my contribution to the object-oriented ontology (OOO) movement. It is through these modes of making where I welcome an engagement with defixus anima and outline a new modality to liberate the systemically repressed and mobilize a global movement.

23

Harman, 260-261

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Conclusion I make art to challenge entrenched ideologies made so invisible that their notions are devised as facts and not otherwise questioned. I play with perception, ideology, and speculative realism to fabricate an interactive landscape fostering exploration and play on the surface to challenge our perception of objects, their importance, aptitude for companionship and key to hierarchical social reform.

My multidisciplinary practice of making, writing and activating sculptures through performance restructures the social and aesthetic interactions with objects through phenomenological experience.

I see these products as my contributions to the object-oriented ontology movement where Graham Harman and Timothy Morton are engaging in the same ideological conversation. I propose the utilization of OOO as a political philosophy through the lens of embodiment to restructure modernity and counter feelings of global anxiety through our campanionships with defixus anima.

Here remains the capacity to transform the social mechanics surrounding the emancipation of defixus anima to achieve liberation of all persons and things.

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Acknowledgements I used to always say I was my own role model as to not cap my potential and to allow myself the freedom and flexibility to be whatever I chose. Today, upon completing this document, I look in the mirror and truly feel I embody this. I have to thank my family, the renowned faculty at California College of the Arts, the teachers, mentors, and faulty at Susquehanna University, Montgomery College, and even those in high school who helped inspire and hone my skills and resilience. For this, I am personally grateful.

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Bibliography Arvay, Clemens G. The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond between Humans and Nature. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2018.

Bedford, Joseph. "From the Particular to the Universal." (E-flux Architecture. April 22, 2019.

Accessed April 22, 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/curriculum/260417/from-the-particular-to-the-universal/ ) Chigra, M., and t. Oyama. “Mechanism and Effect of Chemical Weathering of Sedimentary Rocks.”

ScienceDirect. September 2, 2007. Accessed September 18, 2018.

Esposito, Roberto. Persons and Things: From the Body’s Point of View. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015.

Harman, Graham. Object-oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. London: Pelican Books, 2018.

Libretexts. “3.7: Conservation of Mass - There Is No New Matter.” Chemistry LibreTexts. January 8, 2019. Accessed May 3, 2019.

Norman, Donald A. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York, NY, NY: Basic Books.

Shafaieh, Charles. “See Attached.” Kinfolk, 2018.

Siembieda, William J. “Ritual and the Public Realm in Japan: Jizo Temples in Neighborhoods.” Focus 12, no. 1 (February 26, 2016).

Spivey, Michael J., Grosjean, Marc, Knoblich, Gunther. “Continuous Attraction toward Phonological Competitors.” PNAS 102, no. 29 (July 19, 2005).

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