Sofija Chroneos BFA Thesis Book

So how could humans not consider matter, whether it be worm, bat, viral, or mechanical, to be a part of our, human, political functioning? How could an unprecedented and deadly virus not completely dismantle our anthropocentric sense of hierarchy? Then again, this disrupts our sense of “stability” and “normalcy” with which we grasp onto for meaning in our daily lives.

This fear of unpredictability likely contributes to what Bennett describes as a kind of “prejudice” against “a (nonhuman) multitude misrecognized a context, constraint or tool (108).” She writes, “A vital materialist theory of democracy seeks to transform the divide between speaking subjects and mute objects onto a set of differential tendencies and variable capacities (108).”

As visual artists, we muse over our role within the ruptures as well as within synthesis of human and nonhuman interactivity. It is typically our practice to digest the visible (though not exclusively), and produce more visuals through material means. Our practices consist of the study of material/human human/material interplay. We take on a certain intellectual and undeniably anthropocentric role within that exchange because we [I] are the artist, the intellectual being. The material is to be manipulated to render what we [I] had envisioned. It is made to look a certain way, to take on an aura, and a vitality. Art, not fully but largely, is understood to be an aesthetic, visual manifestation of some thing. And in the context of vital materialism, the question is, how do these materials or these things become actants in the systems that produced them? Or does the exchange simply end when the artist- the human- decides it has ended? This is not to point a finger towards the art economy and human habits of monetary transaction, but instead something deeper. Does something more exist? Should it? Humans and other materialisms are thus in a constant rotation, fencing match, taming and training, of power. There is no telling which one more deeply affects the other.

My favorite genres of music are late-twentieth century soul, jazz, and R&B, for their ability to describe the human experience not with words, but with syllables (of which I am sure there is a history I have yet to learn). But the experience of falling in love described as “do dat da dadada da dat da” when placed in exchange with a chorus of violins? There is no simpler a way to explain a human-human experience, otherwise full of complexity. Yet, these songs, to me, transcend into a nonhuman realm as well. There’s something pure about them—the fact that they do not need language, but still use it, wax and wane with their use of repetitive instrumentals, speaks to the simple ceaselessness of being.