Thinking Deep? Creative collaborations for Ungrounding thought?

Keywords: depth, underground, art, subsurface, creative
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31

Abstract

I begin, as many discussions of the deep do, in the midst of its so-called ‘epistemological murk’. In asking ‘what lies beneath?’ the recent intensification of attention to going under-ground, under-sea and under-ice, has drawn to the fore the challenges the deep poses, not just as a site to think on or with, but as a locus which ‘un-grounds’ thought itself. As eyes and minds turn downward, this paper explores what creative research practices might offer to our thinking and talking about the deep. Exploring examples drawn from an ongoing collaborations with a series of artists, this paper visits a sequence of caves and tunnels. In doing so it probes the reoccurring tension between ‘solving’ the challenge of knowing the deep – of rendering it visible or otherwise sensible – and finding in its very unknowability, critical and political potential. Going ‘below’ with these creative practices I explore the role of sensing, imagining and speculation as integral to questions of ‘thinking deep’.