An online talk by Rebecca Najdowski & Rhona Eve Clews, which explores entanglement between humans, nature & photographic materiality.
Sun, 23 May 2021
12:00 – 15:00 BST
Online via Zoom.
Tickets - Pay as you feel.
About this event
An online talk by Rebecca Najdowski & Rhona Eve Clews, which explores entanglement between humans, nature & photographic materiality.
Rebecca Najdowski
Rebecca Najdowski is a Melbourne-based artist whose work engages with the material and political implications of representing nature through photographic technologies. By focusing on optics, light, minerals, time, and chemical and digital interactions, her projects embody such essential components of photomedia in order to expose the conditions of representation. Rebecca’s work has addressed desert ecology, botanical specimens, natural phenomena like the sun, geothermal activity, and rain, and imaginings of the universe. She holds a PhD from Victorian College of the Arts (University of Melbourne) and an MFA from California College of the Arts.
"Based on recent practice-led PhD research, this talk delves into artwork that addresses how nature is envisioned through photography, video, and scanning technology. With a focus on material agency, my practice looks at how humans, nature, and photomedia technology are inherently entangled. In this talk, I will highlight projects made by directly exposing photo-materials to natural phenomena like geothermal activity, photographs created through haptic manipulations of conventional landscape imagery, and digital 3D scans of flora. My aim through this work is to undermine the limiting features of photomedia — to draw attention to them — to open up new perspectives on nature."
Rhona Eve Clews
"Whether melting my body into the innards of my home photocopier, filming erupting geyser postcards found on eBay or crawling on my belly to enter macro-pollen perspectives, I will discuss the myriad experimental photographic approaches I use to collapse ecological distance. Drawing on my training as psychologist and psychic, I re-situate photography into an expanded, eco-feminist somatic practice, led by feeling, sensation and mutuality. From converting night back into darkroom to cuddling my limbs with light-sensitive materials, my talk reclaims the photographic as a dynamic space for spontaneous human/more-than-human exchange.
My creative practice draws upon my past of growing up a hippie to generate understanding between human and more-than-human worlds. Working across writing, photography, performance, and film, I blend eco-feminisms with fiction, humour, SF and trauma theory. Enacting my longing for planetary interconnectedness through absurd quests I rub-up-against and clamber inside other ‘bodies’ I encounter, merging human, non-human, cosmos and ecology. With a dual background in Psychology and Photography I am an MFA graduate from Slade School of Fine Art and a Healer/Therapist specialising in Trauma and Addiction. I exhibit widely, co-curate and teach expanded photography, poetry, and writing."