Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

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This paper proposes a new philosophical perspective on the home/office situation producing evidence of the quotidian, as experienced during the covid 19 pandemic. This, when disseminated through arts practice, can be articulated as some of the pieces and patches of lived experience, providing lasting/fleeting ‘artefacts’ – life as ‘splices’ witnessed though virtual (teams/zoom) technology. Citing historical and contemporary references including arthouse cinema, art, theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis the paper will critique intersections of place, time and representation through the lens of the domestic and gendered. Here, private space conversely, and (perhaps perversely) became public property viewed through digital/virtual home/work. The practice employs ‘tinkering’ and ‘bricolage’ as creative expressions, enabling assembled ‘screenshots’ of life lived between the screen to emerge, as an expression of the transitional and the liminal. It explores feminist arts activism as a way to contextualise this experience, acknowledging that the past, present and future have not only become miscible through contemporary visual media, but activate the matrixial in respect of converging experiences. Matrixial as a theoretical position, developed by artist and psychoanalysis Bracha L Ettinger, is being explored through this praxis since it embodies a multitude of perspectives (some collective, some individual).