WRITING

“Mineral Materialities in Contemporary Art: between intra-action, discursive magic and grief”

Through the convergence of contrasting epistemological systems in the context of art making, what might we learn about mineral specimens as scientific phenomena, new age artefacts and objects of aesthetic fascination? What are the flashpoints for their affective, material and symbolic intensities? Thinking across and between disciplines how do visual experiments with these geological formations draw and enlarge ideas from the social sciences, the sciences, industry and informal knowledge practices? With this in mind, philosopher Karen Barad (intra-action), political theorist Jane Bennett (vibrant matter), Gilles Deleuze (on Spinoza) as well as artist and writer David Garneau provide strategies for understanding the performance of the nonhuman, material, natural and cultural factors in aesthetic objects enriching and thickening a speculative and material discussion of the expressive potential of exhibitionary practices. Crystals, figures of becoming and emergence, intra-act with scholarly and artistic activity from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

Published by Routledge Curating Lively Objects: Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines

Unsettled Feelings

The essay “Unsettled Feelings” is a reflection of the the first year of the pandemic (March 2020-2021). It is directly informed by the production of a collage series that began in response to COVID 19. Working with gifted and thrifted National Geographic magazines, Cutler embraced the virus by channeling its RNA code to cast spells through hieroglyphic forms. Organized month by month, the writing explores research on anti-racism, pandemic discourse and aesthetics taking up how expressive forms are a vital zone of research and experimentation.

View the PDF of the essay Unsettled Feelings

View the PDF of the artist book OTOH

Supported by Emily Carr University and a SSHRC Institutional Grant, 2019

On the Other Hand, Kronoscope

On the Other Hand, 2020 is a collage series that began in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. Working with gifted and thrifted national geographic magazines, Cutler embraced the virus by channeling its RNA code to cast spells through hieroglyphic forms. By bringing disparate elements together into new configurations, an emergent lexicon is cast of human gestures and cultural artifacts. These sparse, abstract images operate as a kind of writing, open to interpretation while resonating our shared bodily experiences of uncertainty.

Since 1966, the International Society for the Study of Time (ISST) has been providing a framework for an interdisciplinary dialogue about the nature of time. KronoScope offers a forum for the cross-fertilization of scholarly and scientific study about the nature of time as seen from a range of perspectives and disciplines.

View the PDF On the Other Hand, Kronoscope

Read about the project on KronoScope.

Searching for the Language of the Universe

What happens when physicists and artists collaborate on some of science’s biggest questions? A unique project reveals surprising affinities. Co written with Ingrid Koenig. Read the essay on the Canadian Art website.

An Elemental Typology: Artist Book

Supported by Emily Carr University and a SSHRC Institutional Grant, 2019

SaltWalks: A Photo Essay

Journal of Public Pedagogies Special Issue: Walking in/as Publics, 2019

The journal is open source and online.

Open and Wide: Figuring Digestion as Research-Creation

Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Practice-Led Research, Natalie Loveless, editor, University of Alberta Press, forthcoming 2019

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Special Investigations: Randy Cutler interviews John Cussans

Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Practice-Led Research, Natalie Loveless, editor, University of Alberta Press, forthcoming 2019. Curating Lively Objects: Post-disciplinary museum perspectives, Dr. Lizzie Muller and Dr. Caroline Seck Langill, editors, Routledge, forthcoming.

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Review: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene

by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, Editors, The Goose online journal for the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada, forthcoming.

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