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Research / Practice Article

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2024): Drawing Anthropocene

The Artfulness of More-Than-Human Trace

Submitted
18 January 2024
Published
11-03-2024

Abstract

This article grows out of a wider research project that investigates the artfulness of traces made by more-than-human life through the lens of ecologically inspired contemporary drawing practice. In this sense, drawing is a way of paying attention to the artfulness of an action, experience or state that leaves a trace: a mark or sign, track or trail left by the movement of life. This research concerns Indexical Drawing, a practice that makes direct contact with the world through mark-making, shifting the focus of drawing beyond the human. In this article, more-than-human traces are documented by photography resulting from a thrown-togetherness of lives through a practice of walking, paying attention and sympathy, forming new kinds of relationships with life such as gastropods, arachnids, insects and vegetation. Walking-in-place develops an investigative space for more-than-human objects to reveal their own aesthetic yield from the properties and physicalities they possess. This article challenges the anthropocentrism of the Anthropocene and aims to contribute to a rethinking and reimagining of ecological processes through a way of drawing, proposing and perceiving artfulness in the more-than-human.