What Once Was, Is All That Should Have Been

My research paper and studio work will look at the recontextualization of three basic building materials: concrete, steel, and Wood. My research aims to provide these materials with a renewed agency that imbues them with power through visual and tactile language. My studio work will look at how these materials function via an aesthetic that will evoke a visceral experience delivered through medium and subject engagement. The physical work will seek to break the barrier between the observer/viewer and the work itself by providing a participatory experience with the pieces I have made. My paper will look at the Arte Povera movement as theorized by Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant. Adopting some of the methodologies of Arte' Povera to the theoretical writings on New Materialism, the resulting studio work will establish a visual context that supports the reiteration of the materials used. The central focal point, The Nest, will mark both the beginning and the end of my research and the resulting work. This sculptural element will encompass a place of birth along with a repository of the past, present, and future. The embodiment of my practice and research will work within five principles: proximity, similarity, continuity, connectedness, and closure. The works I will introduce within this paper will unpack these principles by assemblages made with new and repurposed materials and objects. The phenomenological experience with the piece has also impacted this paper as the materials have been imbued with a renewed power and agency of their owna power that New Materialism informs. My paper will investigate the ontological definition of certain materials and how these materials have been impacted through the works created. I will be discussing a new approach, one combined with the "vitalism"1 of Jane Bennett, the writings of Diane Coole, and "imbuing the 'things' with power" of materials. As stated by Christiane Meyer-Stoll in Che Fare?: "They invite viewer participation, urging visitors to place themselves, as in the mirror paintings, in a situation where they become part of the work. In this respect, they offer an open-ended situation that provides a communitive structure."2 The title of this paper, What Once Was, Is All That Should Have Been, engages one with the history of materials that have entrenched themselves in our everyday lives, such as concrete and steel. A renewed agency allows concrete and steel to break with their history by forming a more empathetic practical ethos rather than one that aligns itself with their brutalist past. With its iconic history as a symbol for an environment that has fallen victim to deforestation that seeks to harvest it for building and clears forests to allow for further development, Wood, acts as the catalyst