KIM ROBERTSON: REFRAMING THE SOCIAL: ATTUNING TO THE OTHER-THAN-HUMAN WORLDS

Kim Robertson Restor(y)ing the Land

THURSDAY 23 JULY, 13:30 - 13:55 

Lecture Room 2

This paper examines Indigenous-informed, specifically Andean shamanic methods as forces within a practice-led visual arts inquiry, reframed here as social modalities that extend beyond human-to-human engagement. Grounded in these relational and Indigenous-informed methodologies, the research considers how forms of attunement, reciprocity, and embodied relational encounters facilitate a reorientation of the social to include other-than-human beings.

Centered on an encounter with the mountain Jabal Hafeet, the project traces a shift from observational landscape practice towards a relational mode of engagement rooted in ethical response and other-than-human connection. Through this shift, the social is not understood as exclusively human, but as an expanded field of relations that includes land, material, and spirit.

Drawing on practice-led methods that invoke ritual and ceremony as relational encounters, that inform material processes, this research explores how knowledge is produced through situated encounters with the other-than-human.

By positioning Indigenous-informed methods of engagement as social modalities, this paper argues for a broader understanding of the social to include multispecies and other-than-human beings. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing discussions within environmental humanities and contemporary art by proposing relational, materially grounded methodologies that challenge anthropocentric frameworks of knowledge production.