Hermes & the veil: essais between art, feminism and physics

• Main Author: Bennes, Crystal J.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: L900 Others in Social studies; W100 Fine Art; Chanda; Harding; Maitland; Northwest Passage; Northwest passage
• Online Access: https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/50121/; https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/50121/1/bennes.crystal_phd%20%2818015278%29.pdf

This thesis explores the ways in which visual art practices can engage with the sciences; or, more precisely, how my artistic practice engages with the field of physics. Rather than define itself as interdisciplinary ‘sciart’ or ‘art science’, the thesis argues for an innovative approach. Informed by the feminist works of writers and thinkers such as Sandra Harding, Sharon Traweek, Lauren Chambers and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, this approach draws from a diverse set of practices including artistic research, ethnography, science and technology studies, and feminist theory. Less interested in participating in longstanding ‘two cultures’ debates in which arts and sciences are defined either as oppositional or complementary forms of knowledge creation, the thesis argues for a novel way forward. Adapted from the field of cultural translation, particularly the work of Sarah Maitland and Michel Serres—in which methods of interpretation, distanciation, and appropriation are key—the thesis argues for an innovative method of negotiation between two otherwise specialist domains. Here, the artist self-consciously acts as a Hermes-like figure, moving between two worlds, occupying a position that Serres refers to as ‘the Northwest Passage’, the treacherous in-between. The thesis further moves the conversation away from ongoing debates around ‘two cultures’—and from discussions of possible disciplinary commonalities such as ‘creativity’, ‘curiosity’, and ‘experimentation’— by asking whether it might not be more constructive for artists to differentiate based on concepts of ethics and values. Borrowing Hester Reeve’s idea of the artist as a moral agent, questions of ethical agency, in both art and science, are central to the practice. While the thesis endeavours to move on from existing ‘two cultures’ binaries, it nevertheless acknowledges the challenges and inherent contradictions present in any attempt to do so. Although the art practice critically accounted for in this dissertation is ambivalent about the production of ...