Animism?
I feel it is important to share my own definition of animism, as the term can be vague, and even misleading. For example, a scholarly explanation, rooted in the academic study of cultural anthropology, will be vastly different from the definition shared by a member of an indigenous culture who has a lived experience of animism.
The Oxford Dictionary defines animism thusly:
the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.
the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe.
These definitions leave a lot of room for interpretation. My perspective is based on my own experience and observations:
In my view, animism is a worldview that allows for the possibility that all life is capable of having experience.
Continuing this thread, I firmly believe that all lived experience is equal. We may have thoughts, viewpoints, and opinions that the primacy of our own experience supersedes that of others, but logically, I cannot accept that as true. Experience is our conscious ingestion of the raw phenomena of the universe. There can be no hierarchy that marks one lived experience as more valid than another.
In humanity’s long history, our justifications for perpetrations against individuals, other groups of humans, and the natural world, always rely in part on the invalidation of that being or group’s experience.
So what does this mean? You walk into a field of flowers, and you aren’t just standing amongst some beautiful plants. Instead, you’re in the presence of a community of living beings, experiencing the weather and sunlight of that day. Some are young and growing with strength and vigor, others are fading, damaged perhaps. When you leave the field, the flowers will sit there still, having their own experience. As the sun grows lower in the sky, they will feel the temperature dropping, and still, they will be living their experience in the quiet of the night. We confuse intellect and thought with being - I believe the ability to ruminate is not a requisite to be capable of experiencing. We humans are not the mind - we are that silent listener who witnesses the litany of our brainly chatter.
A worldview that honors the truth that all forms of life are capable of their own experience is a much more inclusive one. It is also a much more connected one - our brothers and sisters, children and elders, extend far beyond our human family, to the creatures and natural biomes of the world, and even the vast ecosystem of life within our bodies. Not to mention, those unseen cohabitants who dwell on the edges of folklore and legend.
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake posed the idea that the Sun may be conscious. The Shinto faith of Japan speaks of Tsukumogami, a category of spirit that are said to inhabit physical objects that reach the age of 100 years. Why not? Why restrict the capacity for experience in any facet of existence, when we have no means to validate such a limitation?
It is with this worldview in my heart that I create the works you see here, in the hopes that you too might see life in the same way.