Art Feature—“A Child’s Map to a Future World”
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Date
2021-06
Authors
von Raven, Billy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
“A Child’s Map of a Future World” is a mixed media work on wood panel that investigates how a future descendant might map a world of climate breakdown using accumulated everyday fragments. These fragments were chosen according to how a child might respond to materials: regarding felt knowledge, relationships, or experiences, not just aesthetics. Both nonhuman and human-made, the materials embody inextricable relationships between the social world and the nonhuman world. Since neither maps nor relationships are fixed, each arrangement of the world is of its moment and therefore always in flux but, at the same time, is specific, differentiated, and relational. This dynamic world-building is fundamental to producing culture and remaking human relations with each other, place, material, nonhuman kin, and ecosystems. The map supposes an alternative to a fear-based apocalyptic future but does not offer a didactic solution or a moral imperative. It is rather a story, a door, a way into a future—because engagement in specific, material relationships is a method of inquiry, a way of reconfiguring the extractive paradigm that is driving the current climate crisis.
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Keywords
climate change, mixed media, children