Uncommon Nature

Uncommon Nature looks towards ideas of collective experience and the inherent multiplicity that is encapsulated within it both online and ‘in real life’ — somehow mirroring the nature of the Satellite project itself. Referencing the multiple locations of the project, Satellite is a screen-based public art project that exists across multiple public locations in Melbourne (AUS), Sydney (AUS) and Auckland (NZ) simultaneously. The project examines notions of the public space, specifically the public square, and what it means for art to occupy these spaces and connect physically disparate audiences through a collective experience.

In his book, Wild Mind, eco-philosopher, Bill Plotkin argues that we are “being summoned by the world itself to make many urgent changes to the human project, but most central is a fundamental re-visioning and reshaping of ourselves…”

How do we know what we are, how do we know the extent of our natures? As we move further into the catastrophe of human-propelled change, what methods can we bring into effective action to listen, and hear what the other-than-human can tell us about our human natures? And when we hear this, how will we prepare a new way of collectively knowing ourselves in relation?

In the realm of the mind, which in many ways is the space of the ‘art’, and in turn ‘our’ vital expression, we hear the weight of water, touch our ancestors, stir the mechanics of industry toward canny poetry, and embrace the truth of multiple, discordant voices hurtling experience around and toward the earth. It is here, through the whisper of the screen on the edge of our common spaces that we continue to unravel that which currently lies uncommon to our natures.

As our art unveils and our eyes lay open, our hearts hear a new song for an old ceremony. And in this we prepare again for a present that re-communizes that which has become uncommon through a colonized competitive class, whom are bewitched by an object and possession based antagonism. The artists in this project all touch upon the need for a treaty to re-common senses of wonder. They apprehend the tools of flow, poise, cosmicality, retrocausation and breath. In experiencing their work we develop a deeper empathy for worlds beyond ourselves, within ourselves, to each-other, and to each-other’s others.

—     Dario Vacirca + Lucie McIntosh