Mel as Hyperobject

Authors

  • Mel Keiser

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Keywords:

practice-as-research, arts-based research, visual art, identity, systems theory, distant reading, ficto-criticism, studio practice, doing/thinking, non-philosophy, becoming, experimental literature

Abstract

Through the words of Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), the adapted practice of distant reading, the lens of current neuroscience, and the flavor of non-philosophy, artist Mel Keiser transmutes a text about object oriented ontology and ecological philosophy into a piece that describes what it is to be an identity becoming.

Author Biography

Mel Keiser

Since 2015, Chicago-based artist Mel Keiser has been working on a multifaceted project titled, The Life and Deaths of The Mels. In evaluating who she’s been over the course of her life, Keiser identified six moments of liminality that resulted in significant self-change and have, arguably, created seven categorically different versions of herself over time: Melissa-Louise-Keiser, Mel(v.1), Mel(v.2), Mel(v.3), Mel(v.4/5), Mel(v.6) and Mel(v.7). In The Life and Deaths of The Mels, Keiser rewrites her personal history as the births and deaths of these different versions of herself—as The Mels. Using installation, performance, and writing, Keiser creates material evidence for these versions of herself, exploring the social and psychological impact of treating herself as a stratified series of distinct selves rather than a single person in fluid development. She uses scientific research methodologies alongside artistic praxes, hybridizing disciplines like personality psychology, evolutionary biology, and quantum physics to invent proof of the existence of these self-versions and to explain how and why these segmented versions of herself exist.

References

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Bravo, Javier A., Paul Forsythe, Marianne V. Chewb, Emily Escaravage, Hélène M. Savignac, Timothy F. Dinan, John Bienenstock, and John F. Cryan. 2014. “Ingestion of Lactobacillus Strain Regulates Emotional Behavior and Central GABA Receptor Expression in a Mouse via the Vagus Nerve.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (38): 16050–16055. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1102999108 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1102999108

Daddario, Will. 2015. “Doing Life Is That Which We Must Think.” Performance Philosophy 1: 168–174. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2015.1118 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2015.1118

Keenan, Julian Paul, Aaron Nelson, Margaret O’Connor, and Alvaro Pascual-Leone. 2001. “Neurology: Self-recognition and the Right Hemisphere.” Nature 409 (6818): 305. https://doi.org/10.1038/35053167 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35053167

Laruelle, François. 2012. “Non-Philosophy as Heresy.” In François Laruelle, From Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard Thought, edited by Robin Mackay, 257–284. Falmouth: Urbanomic/Sequence Press.

Laruelle, François. 2013. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy. Translated by Taylor Adkins. Minneapolis: Univocal.

Libet, Benjamin. 1985. “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action.” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (4): 529–566. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00044903 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00044903

Moretti, Franco. 2015. Distant Reading. London: Verso.

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

Published

30-08-2018

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2018): Crisis/Krisis

Section

ReViews

Categories

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Mel Keiser

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