"This was the insight contained within the posthumous book Art and Agency, by one of the greatest anthropologists of the last century, Alfred Gell. In it, he describes the cultural forms through which it becomes possible to attribute agency to artifacts and objects in Western culture. We can see a common form of everyday animism in children and their relationship with dolls or stuffed animals, but also in adults when they talk to cars or computers. This is, however, an ironic and metastable type of behavior, in which the dominant attitude is often one of “as if,” of play, or of pretense. However, there is another, deeper form of animism in which the recognition of the subjective character of objects is neither ironic nor unstable: art. Gell’s book teaches us that, to think about the planet, it is better to make art, not ecology. Knowing Earth as a subject means knowing it through art. But it is not that art has to represent Earth, nor is it enough to bring plants into a museum to know the planet. It is about relating to Earth as we relate to art; that is, thinking of the planet itself as an art form, as a kind of open-air museum for contemporary nature—or, if you like, of immense theater. Earth must become a planetary theater: not in the sense of a building, but in the sense of a space in which everything—plants, animals, lichens, fungi, stones, winds, clouds, etc.—is perceived as an actor, as capable of acting, as a subject."
Test: Coccia, E., Don’t Call Me Gaia, e-flux.com
afb: Bruno Novelli, Na Força, 2009.