Open AccessMaking New Land: An Intertidal Aesthetics
Author(s) -
Thomas Pausz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
performance philosophy/performance philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2947-5589
pISSN - 2057-7176
DOI - 10.21476/pp.2021.62328
Subject(s) - vision , aesthetics , intertidal zone , beauty , dream , history , environmental ethics , art , ecology , philosophy , sociology , anthropology , psychology , neuroscience , biology
Making New Land is an essay in theory-fiction set in a near future, where the oceans have disappeared. In these devastated landscapes, a first person narrator investigates unsolved biological enigmas on Earth and on Mars. In the footsteps of a fictional group of Anarcho-botanists called Sea for Space, the story alternates a melancholic longing for the beauty of intertidal and coastal lifeforms with futuristic visions of new species engineered by humans as new companions.The scenario explores archetypal figures of plant-human coexistence: from the botanical gaze to a nostalgic longing for connection, and from the hubris of genetical engineering to the dream of a post-humanism communion with the vegetal. The fictional story is interwoven with scholarly references and a critical discussions of artistic and literary works dealing with the fauna, flora and mythologies of the seaside, which form the outlines of an 'Intertidal Aesthetics'.