The Artist as Facilitator: Being present with & loving the unknown

Authors

  • Meghan Moe Beitiks University of Florida

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2019.51114

Keywords:

practice-as-research, object-oriented ontology, new materialism

Abstract

Object-Oriented Ontology presents stark implications for the process of the artist. If all matter is alive, then all things are co-performers, and all art becomes performance. How does one work with the presence of the non-human, and what are the ethical implications of attempting to attune to its needs? Beginning with the object of a table, and considering it within both Graham Harman's discussion of "The Third Table" and the thing as a performing object, Meghan Moe Beitiks analyzes the presence of the non-human in performance and asserts a need for awareness, consideration and love in the creative process.

Author Biography

Meghan Moe Beitiks, University of Florida

Meghan Moe Beitiks is an artist working with associations and disassociations of culture/nature/structure.  She analyzes perceptions of ecology though the lenses of site, history, emotions, and her own body in order to produce work that analyzes relationships with the non-human. She received her BA in Theater Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her MFA in Performance Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was a Fulbright Student Fellow, a recipient of the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, and a MacDowell Colony fellow. She is currently an Interdisciplinary Studio Art Lecturer at the University of Florida.

References

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Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822391623

Bogost, Ian. 2012. Alien Phenomenology, or What it’s Like to be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816678976.001.0001

Beitiks, Meghan Moe. 2013. “The Work of a Lifetime: time and performance in ecologically restorative art.” Paper at PSi19, Stanford University, CA.

CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). 2015. “Facilitation Tip Sheet.” http://www.cdc.gov/phcommunities/resourcekit/resources.html

Gianacchi, Gabriella. 2012. “Environmental Presence.” In Archaeologies of Presence: Art, Performance and the Persistence of Being, edited by Gabriella Gianacchi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks, 53–61. New York and London: Routledge.

Harman, Graham. 2014. “The Object and the Arts.” Institute of Contemporary Art London, 14 May. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ0GR9bf00g

Harman, Graham. 2012. The Third Table. 100 Notes—100 Thoughts: DOCUMENTA (13) 085. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.

Howell, Anthony. 1999. The Analysis of Performance Art. New York and London: Routledge

Morton, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

McIntyre, Shannon. 2007. “Green With Empathy.” Greater Good Magazine (UC Berkeley), June 1. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/green_with_empathy

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Published

30-11-2019

How to Cite

Beitiks, M. M. (2019). The Artist as Facilitator: Being present with & loving the unknown. Performance Philosophy, 5(1), 149-157. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2019.51114

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2019): Sites of appearance, matters of thought: Hannah Arendt and Performance Philosophy

Section

[Margins]

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