Unit 1: Contextual Practice Essay
Nimmi Hutnik
Hut00041440

The Wimbledon College Annual Debate

N.B. The essay takes the form of a debate held between two artists holding differing views of humankind and the objects that they encounter. I am hoping to expand this essay into a 4000 word dissertation. This essay therefore only deals with a few parts of OOO because of the 1000 word limit. More work on the contextual development of my art practice is found in the section on Critical Reflections in the Online Research Folio

Geraint Evans: Welcome everybody to the Wimbledon College of Art Annual Debate. Today we have Professor Arthur Pooo and Professor Artemius Christian in conversation with each other about the nature of objects. The topic of the debate today is ‘In the larger scheme of things humans are no different to rocks and artists need to reflect this in their practice’ Professor Pooo, as a Proponent of Object Oriented Ontology would you kick off the debate for us. Are humans no different to rocks?

Prof Pooo: Well yes, if we were to look at humans and rocks with the lens of OOO (Kerr, 2016) then indeed humans are no different to rocks. OOO suggests that there is no hierarchy between objects, that we all exist on the same plane of value and that nothing is of greater significance than anything else (Bryant, Srnicek and Harman, 2011).

Geraint Evans: And you Prof Christian, What stance do you take on this topic?

Prof Christian: My understanding is that humans are indeed different to rocks, that they carry value and significance by virtue of the fact that humans are imbued with consciousness and the ability to self -reflect while rocks are inanimate and have no capacity for choice.

Prof Pooo: I would argue that objects such as rocks and other non-human entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our definition of consciousness. As artists we are engaged in the endeavour of investing objects with meaning. So the idea that objects themselves may have something to say about their existence strikes a chord somewhere with us (Kerr, 2016). With the advent of Artificial intelligence we are inclining closer and closer to having intelligent machines and scientific developments are increasing our understanding of how animal minds work. OOO is dedicated to taking a non-anthropomorphic stance towards objects (Morton,. It endeavours to investigate the ‘inner world’ of nonhuman non-living entities. In contrast to the philosophy of phenomenology, which claimed that objects exist only in, as much as they are perceived by human mind, OOO claims that things do exist independent of the human mind ( Bogost, 2012; Bryant, Srnicek and Harman, 2011; Harman, 2016)

Prof Christian: I would agree with you here, my dear friend Art, objects do exist independent of the human mind to perceive them. There is an objective reality. It is not all a ‘social construction of reality’(Berger and Luckmann, 1966).  You must have heard the poem God in the Quad?

There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply:
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

(R. Knox cited in G. Stedman, 2010)

Yes objects have an independent existence because they are held in the purview of God.

Prof Pooo: This is of course where I differ from you, Arte. While you occupy a spiritual perspective I occupy a post-humanist, non-anthropocentric perspective on the nature of life and consciousness: none of the things one can name (computers, dogs, humans, rocks, trees) can be thought of as intrinsically more or less important than any other. Any idea of human specialness is simple arrogance. According to the founder of OOO, Graham Harman, “ The world is not the world as manifest to humans, to think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense but obligatory”.

Prof Christian: I could not agree more that we have to think a reality beyond our comprehension. But according to you, because it is beyond our comprehension you are at a dead end. You can think it no further. In my understanding of things, positing a God who is infinite enables that reality to exist beyond our comprehension. To me a Universe with a loving God behind it is a very different Universe to one that has no God. 

But what is in question here is the value of human life vs. nonhuman objects. Is an anthropocentric vision of human life justified or merely a matter of human arrogance? I suspect you, dear Art, would argue that it is a matter of human arrogance, that we are not the centre of our Universe, that a human being has no greater value than a rock.  And I would argue the opposite. If for example a rock came hurtling down a mountain side, hit a human being on the forehead and instantly killed her, you would not call the rock evil even though it caused a huge amount of suffering and harm. If however a human being hurled a rock at another human being killing her, the act would be seen as evil because of the capacity for consciousness and intention that the human hurler carries within her (Andrews, 2018).

Geraint Evans: But what has all of this got to do with art, artists and their practice?

Prof Pooo: Good question Geraint and a fundamental one for us here at UAL Wimbledon. In order to focus us here on art and art practice let us take a painting by Nimmi Hutnik. 

Prof Pooo: The painting is on MDF, which in itself carries an extensive ontology, from the tree growing in the forest, to the lumberjacks who felled it, to the lorry drivers who transported it to the manufacturer who made the wood into MDF. And we can look at bitumen, gold leaf and oil paint in much the same way. Each of these objects carries complex ontologies, which we as artists need to recognise as part of our art practice. They are ‘haunted’ with history.. As painting though I do not like it. It is inept technically and aesthetically clumsy.

Geraint Evans: And you Prof Christian?

Prof Christian: The focus of my artistic eye is less on the ontology of the materials, which is truly relevant I must admit, and more on the theme of the painting. Why did Nimmi Hutnik choose to paint a tree lying on its back? I remember that she published a book called Becoming Resilient in 2017 (Hutnik, 2017) in which the final chapters were about bouncing back after one has been knocked down by life and springing forward to flourish despite, or perhaps even because of, adversity. Here we see a resilient tree that has been uprooted but has then, in the context of the Sun put forth shoots that grow towards the Sun. it must therefore have developed roots from its fallen back into the ground. Thus I am looking at a thriving, flourishing tree whose ontology carries within it an instance of intense suffering. And my heart is uplifted.  Is this not one of the key functions of art, to be a kind of therapy for the human heart? (Botton and Armstrong, 2016). I too see the painting as lacking in technique but in my system of thinking I am allowed to make value judgements such as this one. But in yours, dear Art Pooo, you must remain silent about the value of art since all objects are equal and are therefore equally ugly or equally beautiful!

Geraint Evans: Let us put this now to the house. Can we have a show of hands, please raise your hands for Prof Pooo.  And now, how many hands for Prof Christian…

References

Andrews, D. 2018, "My Struggle for good against evil", Zadok Perspectives, vol. March.

Berger, P. & Luckmann, T. 1966, The social construction of reality: A treatise in the Sociology of knowledge, Penguin Books, London.

Bogost, I. 2012, Alien Phenomenology or what it's like to be a thing, University of Minnesota Press, London.

Botton, A. & Armstrong, J. Art as therapy, The school of life press, Zurich.

Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. & Harman, G. 2011, "Towards a speculative philosophy " in The speculative turn: Continental materialism and realism, eds. L. Bryant, N. Srnicek & G. Harman, re.press, Melbourne.

Dick, K. & Kofman, A.Z. 2002, Derrida, Jane Doe Films Inc., UK.

Harman, G. 2016, Object-oriented ontology: A new theory of everything, A Pelican Book.

Hutnik, N. 2017, Becoming resilient: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to transform your life. Harper Element a division of Harper Collins, New Delhi.

Kerr, D. 2016, , What Is Object-Oriented Ontology? A Quick-and-Dirty Guide to the Philosophical Movement Sweeping the Art World.
   Available: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/the_big_idea/a-guide-to-object-oriented-ontology-art-53690 [2018, April/6].

Morton, T.  2015, Charisma and Causality, ArtReview , November. https://artreview.com/features/november_2015_feature_timothy_morton_charisma_causality/ accessed May 9th 2018

Oord, T. 2018, "The problem of evil and the psychology of love.", British Association of Christians in Psychology, Manchester, 16,17 March 2018

Stedman, G. 2010, "God in the quad attributed to Ronald Knox" in An orthodox understanding of the Bible Eloquent Books, Connecticut.

Bibliography

Dawkins, R. vs. Lennox, J. 2008, , The God delusion debate [Homepage of Authentic Media], [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF5bPI92-5o.

Sheldrake, R. 2012, The Science delusion: Feeling the spirit of enquiry, Hodder and Stoughton, London.