WE ARE ASTEROIDS

WE ARE ASTEROIDS – VICTORIA EMILY SHARPLES

Currently reading Timothy Morton’s 2013 publication, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, while making a series of works that somehow acknowledge, or attempt to acknowledge, the interrelationships between things; whether that be: lemons, capitalism, Jupiter, or Styrofoam. Hyperobjects – as outlined by Morton – ‘refer to things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans’ (p.1). They are also ‘directly responsible for what [Morton] call[s] the end of the world, rendering both denialism and apocalyptic environmentalism obsolete’ (p, 2). He notes: ‘A hyperobject could be the Lago Agrio oil field in Ecuador, or the Florida Everglades. A hyperobject could be the sum total of all nuclear materials on Earth; or just the plutonium, or the uranium. A hyperobject could be the very long-lasting product of direct human manufacture, such as Styrofoam or plastic bags, or the sum of all the whirring machinery of capitalism. Hyperobjects, then, are “hyper” in relation to some other entity, whether they are directly manufactured by humans or not’ (p.1). I could continue here, but I think you get the point. Hyperobjects exceed human-scale temporalities; they are real regardless whether someone is thinking of them or not; you can’t point to them, or see them wholly (only in parts, at any given moment), and are unavoidably tied to the Anthropocene – the current geological age,in which human activity has been identified as a force of nature. To this end, I have been using faux-natural materials, or synthetic/manufactured objects (that simulate something natural), to explore the synergy between the human and non-human world. These hybrids (as a new body of work) will be featured as part of the Artcore exhibition WE ARE ASTEROIDS. Currently, I am working with video, text, and collage. Follow me on Instagram for more frequent updates at @victoriaemilysharples or for more information about my practice visit: http://www.victoriasharples.co.uk #plasticgrass #seasponge #landslide #sandpit #icecap