Zoom link: https://gold-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97430546795?pwd=RzdMalRKUVYycDVyaXJYb3RQUzU1Zz09

In this lecture, Fiona MacDonald introduces her work with Feral Practice, which seeks creative ways to unpick the anthropocentric urge to mastery over the creaturely, and asks: how is the binary of the wild versus the tame disturbed and entangled by the line of flight that is the feral?

Vibrant material meetings and exchanges occur at every level of our bodies and worlds but often go unregarded or unknown. If we sensitize ourselves (as vegetal philosopher Michael Marder advises) to the fuzzy edges of our subjectivity in order to meet beings very different to ourselves, might it actually be in the ‘wilds’ of the imagination that we can re-align with nonhuman nature? Feral Practice’s work with social insects, especially wood ants, informs their suggestion that all wild space engages with complex lively ordering systems, which are less legible to human observers because they do not necessarily take us into account. Ants are keystone species of woodlands. They orchestrate vegetal life and dominate the forest floor whilst operating aphid farms in trees. Might the feral artist be also under the control of the ants?

Adorno’s negative dialectics, Eduardo Kohn’s forest that thinks, and Jane Bennett’s vibrant materiality. We will work with shifts of perception, close attention, speculation, imagination, and improvisation to engage deeply and queerly with nonhuman beings, to perceive them and ourselves in new ways.

Fiona MacDonald works with human and nonhuman beings as Feral Practice to create art projects and interdisciplinary events that develop ethical and imaginative connection across species boundaries. Their research draws on artistic, scientific and subjective knowledge practices to explore diverse aesthetics and create suggestive spaces of unknowing nature. Recent projects include: Sum Tyms Bytin Sum Tyms Bit, a film exploring human power and species fragility in Kent, Folkestone Fringe 2020. The Unseeables: a tale of extinction in three birds, film for Scarborough Museum 2020. Myco-Lective an artist collective development programme, with Ama Josephine Budge, Chisenhale Studios 2020. Looking at Bees (film) and Garden to Garden (participation project) with Invisible Dust and South Cliff Gardens, Scarborough 2020. Eyecatchers, National Trust Dunham Massey 2020-21. Ask Somerset’s Plants, radio broadcasts for BBC Somerset and podcasts for Somerset Art Weeks Festival 2019, with Marcus Coates. Phytocentric, performance at LUX London, 2019. Mycorrhizal Meditation, participatory sound work, presented as a digital installation at Taipei Biennale, Governors Island, NYC, Bánkitó Fesztivál, Hungary, Radical Mycology Conference USA, Furtherfield Gallery London, and as live performance at The Bluecoat and UNESCO Paris, 2017-19. Plant Hunting, Invisible Dust for Whitby, 2018. Ask the Wild with Marcus Coates, at Whitechapel Gallery, Tate St Ives, Turner Contemporary, Whitstable Biennale and the Ash Project, and the South London Botanical Institute 2017-18.