Animism in Art and Performance

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction: Animism and Animacies

   • Christopher Braddock

   Pages 1-20

3. Indigenous Animacies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21

      PDF

   2. Te Tuna-Whiri: The Knot of Eels

      • Cassandra Barnett

      Pages 23-44

   3. Activating Photographic Mana Rangatiratanga Through Kōrero

      • Natalie Robertson

      Pages 45-65

   4. Dark Sun: Solar Frequencies, Solar Affects

      • Janine Randerson, Rachel Shearer

      Pages 67-88

4. Atmospheric Animations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 89-89

      PDF

   2. Language as a Life Form

      • Anna Gibbs

      Pages 91-107

   3. The Storm and the Still in the Art of Bridie Lunney

      • Simone Schmidt

      Pages 109-129

   4. Animate Atmospheres: Art at the Edge of Materiality

      • Edward Scheer

      Pages 131-149

5. Animacy Hierarchies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 151-151

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   2. Intra-inanimation

      • Rebecca Schneider

      Pages 153-175

   3. Animacies and Performativity

      • Amelia Jones, Christopher Braddock

      Pages 177-190

   4. Animism, Animacy and Participation in the Performances of Darcell Apelu

      • Christopher Braddock

      Pages 191-211

   5. Exploring Posthuman Masquerade and Becoming

      • Martin Patrick

      Pages 213-231

6. Sensational Animisms

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233

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   2. The Animist Readymade: Towards a Vital Materialism of Contemporary Art

      • Stephen Zepke

      Pages 235-252

   3. Sound Fossils and Speaking Stones: Towards a Mineral Ontology of Contemporary Art

      • Amelia Barikin

      Pages 253-275

7. Back Matter

   Pages 277-291

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This book explores Māori indigenous and non-indigenous scholarship corresponding with the term ‘animism’. In addressing visual, media and performance art, it explores the dualisms of people and things, as well as 'who' or 'what' is credited with 'animacy'. It comprises a diverse array of essays divided into four sections: Indigenous Animacies, Atmospheric Animations, Animacy Hierarchies and Sensational Animisms. Cassandra Barnett discusses artists Terri Te Tau and Bridget Reweti and how personhood and hau (life breath) traverse art-taonga. Artist Natalie Robertson addresses kōrero (talk) with ancestors through photography. Janine Randerson and sound artist Rachel Shearer consider the sun as animate with mauri (life force), while Anna Gibb explores life in the algorithm. Rebecca Schneider and Amelia Jones discuss animacy in queered and raced formations. Stephen Zepke explores Deleuze and Guattari's animist hylozoism and Amelia Barikin examines a mineral ontology of art. This book will appeal to readers interested in indigenous and non-indigenous entanglements and those who seek different approaches to new materialism, the post-human and the anthropocene.

• New Zealand
• visual arts
• new media
• performance studies
• philosophy
• art history
• Maori
• cultural studies
• new materialism
• posthuman

“What beings are alive? What constitutes ‘alive’? Timely questions, in particular to the notion of nonhuman lifeforms in a time of mass extinction; the ecological resonance of the term ‘survive’, which is often mistaken for ‘alive’, and the question of how indigenous cultures matter today, cultures where the concept ‘inanimate object’ don’t hold sway. Where such questions start and stop, who gets to have them and why, are the subject of this wide ranging and learned book.” (Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University, USA, and author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence)

“It’s imperative that contemporary discussions of the ‘liveliness’ of the nonhuman world come to terms with indigenous epistemological frameworks. Putting the practices of contemporary art and theory based in European traditions to the test of rigorous dialogue with Māori ways of seeing and knowing, Animism in Art & Performance advances the conversation considerably, making terrific contributions to art history, cultural studies, and the range of theoretical tendencies grouped under the heading ‘new materialism’.” (Rebecca Zorach, Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art and Art History, Northwestern University, USA, and author of The Passionate Triangle)

“Animism in Art & Performance demonstrates a unique instance of dual sovereignty emerging in academia. By engaging Māori, Pacifika and other academic frameworks (of interpretation, of embodiment, of performativity, and of materiality), this book offers the reader a model for critically engaged, culturally entangled, art writing. In arguments that demonstrate time and again the anti-humanism of the subject/object divide, and the anti-ecological practices that necessarily derive from that inherently exploitative relationship, several authors deploy Karen Barad’s provocative question, ‘Who gets to count as one who has the ability to die?’ The answer, in this case, is a constellation of artworks that shimmer with life.” (Hannah B Higgins, Professor of Art History, University of Illinois, USA, and author of The Grid Book)

“Chris Braddock’s edited book brings together some of the most exciting writers working today in a way that is nuanced, dynamic and multi-cultural. Particularly exciting is the way that Māori and indigenous thought is woven through the chapters in a deliberate and unselfconscious manner, and in doing so sets a new direction for writing in the 21st century.” (Dr. Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), Museums and Cultural Heritage Programme, The University of Auckland, Aotearoa NZ)

“An intelligent and timely collection of texts on how recent art practices open up questions of animacy and the many ways in which we attribute properties of ‘life’ or ‘non-life’ to the phenomena surrounding us. The careful critical dialogue with the Polynesian ethnographic context is a particularly welcome contribution to recent efforts to rethink animism across cultural, historical and disciplinary boundaries.” (Professor Ina Blom, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Norway)

“Animism Lives! This book is a valuable collection of Māori scholarship, buzzing materialist thought and ontological be-keeping written through the arts, literature and culture. What is polychronically generative, lively and teeming is not only revivified, it never lapsed.” (Douglas Kahn, Professor, Art & Design, University of New South Wales, Australia)

• School of Art and Design, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

  Christopher Braddock

Christopher Braddock is an artist, a writer, and Professor of Visual Arts at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. He co-leads the Ph.D. and M.Phil. programmes and the Art & Performance Research Group. He is author of Performing Contagious Bodies: Ritual Participation in Contemporary Art (Palgrave, 2013).

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