UN/making Methodology
Inspired by previous manifestos that promote art as a verb (Situationist Manifesto by Guy Dubord), care (Maintenance Manifesto by Mierle Laderman Ukeles), performativity (Craftivism Manifesto by the Craftivism Collective), environmental thought/action (Eco-Art Manifesto, 2004 by Linda Weintraub and Skip Schuckmann) and degrowth (Degrowth Toolbox for Artists by Alexandra Papademetriou).
Arrived at by deconstructing the visual arts through an eco-critical lens as well as across socio-economic theories of de-alienation, decentring, degrowth and decolonization to encourage an unsettling debate problematizing making in times of ecological and socio-political strife, the UN/making Methodology provides a keystone to a much broader and longer list of methods and things that need UN/making in order to carefully consider and reconsider how one can continue to conceive and produce ‘art’ while resisting systems and processes of harm that keep us complicit in neo-liberal colonialisms that depend on the destruction of the planet and in turn mass extinction of more-than-human and human species.
Speculating on how this UN/making Methodology may need to first take root within the cultural sector before artists have the support and capacity to UN/make themselves from the accelerated systems of extraction and production that keep us complicit in the destruction of the planet, the UN/making Network also puts forward the organization and functions of a forest to suggest a variety of socio-political reconfigurations so that eco-ethical ‘art’ emerges as the tall tree layer essential for sustaining and protecting all other levels of their multi-species eco-systems.
Jill Price, UN/making Network Reconfiguration and Succession Planning Proposal for an Eco-ethical Visual Art Sector in Canada
(7 Layers of the Forest Garden illustration )
