Journal May 2026 Release_Full Edition - Flipbook - Page 35
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meaning, and naming can lead to commodification and dominance, taming the
vitality that imagery brings back to the wild. Words can falsely legitimize, say too
much, close spaces of possibility, and lead us in one direction at the expense of
another. As in artmaking, our encounters with the living world open space for
different modes of representation and thought. The ineffable can also thrive in
silence, and the mystery beyond human speech can inspire radical change beyond
the constraints of worded designations.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) write of relational, territorial expressions in nature,
that “… many birds are not only virtuosos but artists…” and that “… art is not the
privilege of human beings” (pp. 316-17). The ecologist and writer David Abram
(2010) explains that when we speak directly to the world, it responds directly to
us. He writes about the more-than-human world and the multiplicity of
languages, from trees to hives to thunder. Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) coined the term
polyphony to describe the coexistence of multiple voices that sustain a
multivocal, unfinalizable dialogue, each with its own point of view. The writer Ed
Yong (2022) explains the variety of perspectives in the living world:
To us, it feels all-encompassing. It is all that we know, and so we
easily mistake it for all there is to know. This is an illusion … We
cannot sense the faint electric fields that sharks and platypuses can.
(p. 6)
To reach beyond the myopic confines of the known and revitalize our flagging
spirits, we must participate in nonhuman dialogues as far-reaching as those of
technology, as well as those of mice, rocks, and rain.
These dialogues with the world are a recurring theme within the history of art.
We can see this in the dynamic processes of earthworks, such as Robert
Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, and in Andy Goldsworthy’s work, as discussed in the
second article of the series. In addition, the light and space movement, at its
height in the 1970s, relies on the intersections of art and science, inner and outer
engagement, and the viewer’s active participation and perception. Artists such as
James Turrell and Larry Bell present time, space, elements, the body, and
Breaking the Frame: Aesthetic Encounters with Narrative Practice – Part Three
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, May 2026 Release, p. 25-51.
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