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O’Brien, D, 2023. Deep canine topography: reconnecting with the ‘wild’ through the artistic practice of walking with companion species. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
In recent decades many contemporary walking artists and psychogeographers have sought to engage with landscape as a more-than-human meshwork whilst challenging the legacies of colonialism and capitalism’s exploitation of land and bodies. This has seen the emergence of new strategies which reach beyond psychogeography’s initial concerns of the influence of geographical space on the individual and embrace new-materialist concepts of the fluidity of bodies in motion. Such approaches seek to de-individualise the human by privileging more-than-human agency, assemblages, affects and relations. Within a new-materialist frame, walking-art is re-positioned as a more-than-human practice which challenges notions of human exceptionalism. This thesis introduces the practice of deep canine topography to explore the art of walking with dogs as a more-than-human artistic collaboration. A term coined by the author, deep canine topography asks that we abandon upright, bipedal, ocular-centric human points of view, and embrace the vibrant world of our canine companions through affect, immanence, and playful improvisation. By attending to contact zones between human and canine, the walk or walkies is positioned as a shared, co-authored art practice which re-connects the human with the multiplicity of the more-than-human elements that make a world. Utilising artistic research methodologies, I propose, perform, and reflect upon deep canine topography as a novel and creative multispecies practice. In doing so, I embrace canine navigational skills as an invitation to follow the nose and to engage in a more-than-human exploration of place, space, and time through sensory entanglement, leading to the emergence of new radical cartographies. I propose that such radical cartographies problematise Philosophical Humanist concepts of the animal and the nature-culture divide, contributing to wider dialogues in contemporary walking-art practice, critical animal studies and philosophical
posthumanism.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Creators: | O’Brien, D. |
| Contributors: | Name Role NTU ID ORCID |
| Date: | September 2023 |
| Rights: | The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author. |
| Divisions: | Schools > Nottingham School of Art & Design |
| Record created by: | Laura Ward |
| Date Added: | 26 Nov 2024 10:27 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Nov 2024 10:27 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52657 |
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0632-5717Actions (login required)
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