How to Get Down to Earth? Earthbounding Practices in the Works of Aurelija Maknytė

Abstract

The article analyses the practices of earthbounding in the artworks and artistic projects of Aurelija Maknytė. Earthbounding is understood as a newly configured relationship with the Earth, which here refers simultaneously to the planet, the theoretical concept, and a material site that provides resources for artistic production. Maknytė’s artistic projects are considered practices of earthbounding in several respects: first, they seek to overcome the division between nature and culture and create hybrids and chimeras; second, earthbounding is expressed through acts of recording and rewriting memories, opening up transindividual and transgenerational temporalities; third, it is expressed through practices of interspecies collaboration that connect the observer with other life forms and enable a non-human perspective on the Earth. This reconfiguration creates a new relationship with the Earth and invites a critical reconsideration of distinctions within theoretical discourse, such as those between globalisation and the Anthropocene, or between the global image of the Earth and the Earth as a planet. Based on the ideas of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Bruno Latour, the article proposes to conceive of the Earth as an assemblage in which geological, biological, and technological temporalities overlap. The Earth emerges as a habitat for earthbound and earthbounded inhabitants, where biological symbioses, technological hybrids, and new forms of transindividual subjectivity coexist. The work of art becomes a medium of this new transindividual subjectivity, establishing earthbounding as a new ontological mode of existence.