Vital materiality in a world of Vibrant ‘Arty- Shaped’

Objects

How does the notion of ‘Vibrant Matter’ or ‘Vital

Materiality’ relate to Art today, does it promote

Capitalism, or fight against it?

‘…Things on the other hand [signal] when the object

becomes the other, when the sardine can looks back, when

the mute idol speaks, when the subject experiences the

object as uncanny and feels the need for what Foucault

calls a ‘metaphysics of the object, or, more exactly, a

metaphysics of that never objectifiable depth from which

objects rise up toward our superficial knowledge.’ W.J.T.

Mitchell

In 2009 Jane Bennett published a book, ‘Vibrant Matter’,

the quote above was contained within the introduction and

also allows a window into what the following essay will

explore. Vibrant Matter speaks of ‘Vital Materiality’ and

the acknowledgement of this within matter, how the

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acceptance of this could change the way we politically

and ethically approach our thinking, a new materialism.

Within this essay I will dissect Jane’s theory of

‘Vibrant Matter’ and compare this to other non-human

centred philosophies of the Object-Orientated-Ontological

kind, and also examine how Object-orientated thinking has

infiltrated into Contemporary art.

Vibrant Matter emerges as a story of how an assemblage of

different objects emerged as Vibrant Matter one sunny

morning in Baltimore, in Jane’s words;

“ One large men’s working glove

One dense mat of oak pollen

One unblemished dead rat

One white plastic bottle cap

One smooth stick of wood

In this assemblage, objects appeared as ‘things’, that

is, as vivid entities not entirely reducible to the

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contexts in which (human) subjects set them, never

entirely exhausted by their semiotics.”

Through this tale of the emerging vibrancy of ‘things’ we

see a non-human centred philosophy emerge. Within this

human’s/living entities are not eradicated or reduced to

mere objects, but rather we accept the objects as

actants, therefore being capable of creating change,

diversion, expansion and mood etc.

There are many strains of Object-Orientated thinking that

have emerged significantly over the past few decades,

Graham Harman being one of the main drivers of this with

Speculative Realism and OOO (Object-Orientated-Ontology).

Harman’s OOO talks of objects that he categorises into

three constituents, two objects that eventually come

together when a third arrives, of which he calls the

sensuous object, this sensuous object is then how the

other objects ‘become themselves’, allowing the objects

the be able to interact with one another. The theory, on

the surface, sounds stable enough, although Harman has a

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habit of oversimplifying his statements by making them as

open as possible and therefore harder to criticise. For

example he says:

“You cannot get direct access to things as a truth, you allude to them, you

speak of them as an innuendo.”

And…

“You are supposed to vary the objects within the mind, which qualities need to

be present for it to still be an apple? There are a large amount of qualities

that need to be there for it to remain an apple. Four fold, the sensual object

and the sensual qualities that are things that came from experience, time,

space, ethos and essence. Time and space and emerging from different

fractures in relation to an object and its qualities, and then the other things

are essence and ethos.”

Harman never backs up what he is saying with something

that you can actually attach a theory too. His

philosophical work seems to go around in circles, instead

of enlightening us on a new way of interpreting the

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universe, he seems to just talk faster and louder, never

accepting critiques from his contemporaries. He is rather

like an angsty teenager who rather than debating his

theory with critical engagement with his contemporaries

he just shouts over everyone else!

Jane’s approach on the other hand is born from political

theory, from her wish for politics to be practised in a

more creative manner. She openly points out the need for

a living being (human or animal) intervention to realise this

‘Vital Materiality’, stemming from sets of assemblages

within certain environments and frames of mind. Vibrant

Matter was published in 2009, so its context is also

incredibly important, for example many of her references

range from the great Pacific Garbage islands, obesity and

climate change, which are very apparent issues that have

emerged in contemporary life, and most of which have

grown directly out of the Capitalist West and our

condition of over-consumption.

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Harman’s perspective on the other hand, has the ability

to become horrifically unethical in its deliverance, by

reducing and flattening living entities so as equal to

their mass-produced counterparts, allows an all to easily

manipulated, and fragile take, on society (I guess it

eliminates society and ‘the community’ altogether, as

Harman does not believe in holistic thinking). I see this

‘flattening’ of elements as exactly what Capitalism

wishes us to think, it enhances the desirable nature of

objects without them needing to have any nostalgic or

purely practical value, and they can exist separately of

these as long as there is a mediator.

In a world governed by Capitalism we cannot escape the

co-dependency of man made objects and humans, I see how

acknowledging the theory of Vital Materiality may just make us

more aware of our consumption of objects, and maybe

regain a more ethical approach to our consumption

patterns. Of course a student on their MacBook Pro in

London has a very different relationship to Capitalism,

and thus objects, compared to a young adult in the Zulu

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community in South Africa, but this being said I still

believe the acknowledgement of the huge carnivorous hand

of Capitalism is very

important to avoid the

passivity of our over-

consumption.

There are many Artists

dealing with this subject,

in one way or another, and

many of these artists work

around a concept of the Vital Materiality in ‘things’ that Jane

speaks of, some intentionally and critically, others

seemingly accidently stumble upon their assemblages of

‘Vibrant matter’.

One of the first Artists I

want to write about is Benedict Drew, an artist whose

work directly plays with object-orientated thinking and

utilises the consequences of a Capitalist society as his

main subject matter…

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Image 1: Apoplectic, Benedict Drew (2013) Ceri Hand Gallery, London.

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‘… this animation of the object also changes the relationship between the

viewer and the work, and creates an oscillation between subject and object’

Benedict Drew, interview for the Zablodovich collection

during ‘The Glass Envolope’.

This blur between Subject and Object is a key topic of

discussion in Vibrant Matter, trying to eliminate the

subject/object divide and think more critically about the

new relationships we built with ‘things’, in contemporary

life.

Within Ben’s work he questions who is in control, there

is a very apparent loss of human control. There is an

eerie feeling within his installations where lumps of

matter and mind controlling media dominate the gallery

space, we enter a space where humans are the minority and

we become the unintelligible beings, and the things take

over. Benedict’s dystopic installations are comments on

contemporary over-consumption and reveal the passivity of

a capital driven society. It exaggerates the overwhelming

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physicality of objects in a virtual world, the objects

are the slow, passive components and the media is quick

witted and ‘in control’.

Within the Ben’s work, ‘The persuaders’, we (or they, not

really knowing who it is they are addressing), are told

to breathe in and out repeatedly, our very function that

keeps us alive is being controlled, stripped of its

automated function and reduced to a machine controlled by

another machine. This stripping of the inherent functions

of living entities attempts to do exactly what OOO’s

theory claims, thus revealing the Dark side of an object-

orientated world, one where emotions, morality and ethics

do not survive, only the most basic functions operate in

a very systematic world where everything is objectified.

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Image 2: The Persuaders, Benedict Drew (2011) James Taylor Gallery, London.

Ben’s work utilises the very dark future if over-

consumption is endless, but there is also a strong

element of humour and playfulness within his

installations, they entice us to join them, his clay-

covered speakers are friendly and slow and want to

interact. The clay blobs emerge from the Jewish creature

‘Golem’. Made out of clay the Golem is a wonderful

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example of ancient anthropomorphism, the Golem lives in

mines and is supposed to have had life injected into him

by magical means. The Golem was also used to describe

someone less intelligent than average, as it was

contrasted with the ‘wise man’, much like ‘dummy’ in

English.

Ben is using his knowledge of his to create a ‘made up

world’ where physical matter is simplified and has lost

all control over its new technologically advanced

counterparts. It reduces its partakers to mere passive

object’s, much like Harman’s OOO, except Ben is using

this as a critique!

Ben’s work chimes with ‘Vital materialism’, the

acknowledgement of matter’s physicality, and maybe its

loss of the importance of physicality in an ever growing

virtual world, comment on many of the issues of Jane’s

theory. One of the most prominent issues in the book is

to become responsive and gradually break out of our

passive state of mind.

Another artist who is more critically involved with the

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theory of ‘Vital Materiality’ and Vibrant Matter is Zoe

Mendelson. I am aware that Zoe’s practise has been

directly influenced by Jane’s book ‘Vibrant Matter’, so

she should be an interesting medium between the

philosophy and its relation to artistic practises.

Zoe’s practise consists of researching and exploring

collecting, archiving and hoarding, what distinguishes

these from one another and how we respond differently to

these. In ‘THIS PLACE IS A MESS’, Zoe creates artworks

that allow materials to become impulsive, irrational and

for them to create their own disorder within the work.

Her works question our irrational relationships with

objects, they cannot be defined by simple association,

much like the hoarders ‘hoard’, which is where a large

part of Zoe’s research is situated. The objects ‘Call’ to

their consumers/owners and create anxiety within them

that allows the consumer to feel as though they cannot

‘let go’ of the things, that they (the things, that is)

have a hold over them, control them. This is a perfect

example of Ben’s statement ‘one day all your things will answer back’.

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Jane discusses hoarders in detail within Vibrant Matter,

planting the seed that maybe the hoarders relationship to

objects is something much more ‘natural’ than many of

our, over-consuming and wasteful, object relationships

that seem to invade contemporary capitalist life, as the

hoarders respond to this call of the object, as Jane puts it.

Within Zoe’s work the objects act as vessels to explore

their psychological effect on us, her work differs from

Ben’s dystopic relationship to Capitalist consumerism by

focusing on the effects of the object/human relationship,

but both result in the objects containing control over

us.

Zoe’s practise is heavily situated within her research,

and her project ‘THIS PLACE IS A MESS’ is in

collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, an organisation

that promotes relationships between Artists and

scientific subjects.

I feel that Zoe’s collage work is the strongest

visualisation of Vital Materiality, of the collectors and

hoarders understanding of this ‘call of objects’, as the

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surreal overlapping of disparate images creates an

appearance of a non-human centred world, full of man-made

and natural objects communicating within a fictional

space.

There is a very prominent interest in contemporary art

with ‘the use of space’, whether it is the ‘space in an

image’, or, as I am going to talk about, the literal

space between objects and their

inhabited architecture/environment. Use of ‘space’ within

installation art and sculpture emerged as importance of

site specificity, the significance of where objects are

placed and the relationships that they build within that

context. In many situations artists are trying to allow a

conversation to happen between the

separate objects and attempt to

establish interconnections. An artist

that uses this method in

installations to create complex co-

dependencies within her work is Sarah Sze.

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Image 3: Clutter Image Rating, Zoe Mendelson (2013).

Image 4: Everything that Rises Must Converge, Sarah Sze (1999) Foundation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain, Paris.

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Sarah Sze’s installations are a mix of hand made objects,

found objects and

florae, placed together

(usually within a

gallery space or

equally conservative

arena). She carefully

organises these things

very obsessively into large co-dependant worlds. They

often are physically linked so if one component goes awry

then other aspects would equally be affected, for example

In her installations have included a self-watering system

of co-dependant objects. Sarah’s main focus that she

speaks of is on perspective (as her history is in

architecture), but it is very clear within the work her

relationship to non-human communication. You get the

feeling, whilst viewing her work, of a vibrant world of

things taking over, once again the objects are the

dominant force and the human hand that created them

becomes obsolete.

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Sarah and Zoe’s work does not have as much of an apparent

relationship to Capitalism as Ben’s does, but their use

and acknowledgement of thing power alludes to a world

governed by objects and exchange of these, which in

response has direct relations to our use and consumption

of objects in different contexts. It is the nature of the

time we live in that creates such a strong response to

object relations, but within this where does the artists’

ethics lie in the showing of the work, i.e. does the

space the work occupy critique its relation to Capitalism

or become another, slightly eccentric, commodity?

Benedict Drew’s work is shown within the context of non-

for-profit spaces which promote Art and Artists, not as a

commodity, but as progression of visual thinking, such as

Cell Project Space, Zabludovich collection and more

recently Matt’s Gallery. His audience is generally

critically engaged with his subject matter, and his work

is visually strong in promoting this, even without an

already critically engaged audience.

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Zoe’s work has developed within her research, being a

visual component of this, promoting art as a key element

of development within science and philosophy. It’s

obvious that her role as an Artist is to provide a

platform for investigation and not commodity. The artwork

may not be as visually engaging on the subject matter as

Ben’s, but her research is easily accessible and makes

some really interesting points to delve deeper into on

this subject matter.

But Sarah Sze is a prominent Artist within contemporary

art, showing multiple times at the Venice Biennale and

larger institutions. Her work should promote scrutiny on

human centred thinking, but I debate whether the nature

of her installations become more of a ‘Spectacle’ showing

in such large institutions, rather than a critically

engaged work that comments on Object-Orientated thinking.

Is it lost within the vast, hugely popular spaces? And

then does the fact that it becomes ‘Spectacular’ mean the

work just becomes a product of Capitalism?

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Jane Bennett is also very engaged with contemporary art

and often references artists within her lectures, in fact

Cornelia Parker’s work ‘Neither From Nor Towards’ is on

the cover of Vibrant Matter, I believe Vibrant Matter is

an extremely interesting book for Artists to engage with;

Artists being inherently aware of the thingness of matter,

and the anthropomorphic qualities of objects. I also

think that the theory of Vital Materiality has great potential

to promote a more ecological relationship to our

environment and its habitants (whether man made, animal,

vegetable or mineral), but I do also feel that this

Object-Orientated thinking needs a lot of updating to do.

I believe OOO and Vital Materiality need to focus a lot more

thought on ‘the virtual’ and how our relationship with

this is rapidly changing our relationships to physical

matter, Benedict’s work for me bridges a gap within this,

exploring both object relations and virtual reality. With

relation to this I would like to hear more about how they

would describe ‘virtual matter’. There is an increasingly

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growing public that live in the virtual world, (literally

when it comes to ‘second life’!), and that there is not

enough in the new materialist thinking that includes our new

complex infrastructure of virtual and physical objects,

and the blurring of the two.

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