Eco-Art Machines

A Chaosmotic Perspective on Postcolonial Capitalism

Abstract

Putting the complex debate about ecology (for which the essay will draw on the transversal and networked vision theorized by Félix Guattari) in dialogue with Rosi Braidotti’s neomaterialist, postanthopocentric and zoepolitical perpective on contemporary posthuman condition, the article will attempt to reflect on the dynamics of contemporary postcolonial capitalism. The paper will propose a posthuman analysis of a series of works by the art collective Mongrel and its spin-off YoHa, which focus on hegemonic ecologies of power connected to mineral matters that are central to the assemblage of technological devices: Tantalum Memorial (Mongrel, 2008), Aluminium (YoHa, 2008), Coal Fired Computers (YoHa, 2010). The first an installation centered on telephone communication, re-cycling human voices in recorded bits of information; the second a graphic book and a video, compos(t)ing images and data debris of archival nets; the last one an installation of intra- acting human (lung), natural (coal) and technological (computer) matters, they all enact a process of framing, de-framing and re-framing, unfolding as re-cycling processes of human as well as non-human matter. This posthuman entangled matter shows a real as well as virtual complex economic, cultural and political eco-system where hegemonic dynamics of power unfold. In the light of the contemporary debate about art and the politics of ecology, drawing on Guattari’s theoretical reflections on a new esthetic paradigm, traceable in Mongrel’s and YoHa’s art projects, how can we address the question of ecology so that it could help not only the understanding of postcolonial capitalism but also its re-thinking in the frame of a chaosmotic vision of culture, where new, unprecedented subjectivities can arise and a practice of political regeneration can be enacted?