CURRENT + ONGOING RESEARCH
DEEP AESTHETICS
Deep aesthetics is essentially transdisciplinary in nature. It is rooted in the primary ground of the aesthetic as sensuous engagement, woven from strands from philosophy - especially phenomenology - depth psychology, philosophical anthropology, and diverse cultural knowledges. Deep aesthetics foregrounds the backgrounded relational and interconnected aspects of life and living beings, re-situating humankind within a complex world of enmeshed and interdependent Being and mutual becoming. It focuses on depth of engagement and a radical intersubjectivity. Most importantly, deep aesthetic engagement offers revelatory, and potentially transformative, experience. My interest in developing a deep aesthetics is rooted in the question of how to transform human-world and interspecies relations, with a focus on abandoning the dangerous reductive and dualistic ontology of modernity, changing human consciousness and ultimately our behaviours and technologies. Can it be that this is more a matter of re-membering what has been dis-membered, or split apart than of anything new? In the words of psychologist James Hillman speaking of the aesthetic and the Anima Mundi, or soul of the world, "I {often] wonder less how to shift the paradigm than I wonder how we ever got so far off base.”
To read or download conference talks, papers, and publications developing and working with these ideas, please visit: Academia
RESEARCH INTO
PRAXIS
INTO FLOURISHING
Through an interwoven tableau of literature, art, and philosophy, Carruthers manages to forge a new ontological vision, pushing against an established way of being human in the natural world. ... The implication of Carruthers’ vision is a radical notion of what it means to create a new “self-world” relationship grounded in love.
Shelley McEuen, Review of Sustaining the West. The Goose 14:2 2016. Read more: http://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol14/iss2/4/
WRITINGS BY
Other Publications, Research Reports, etc. (selected)
2021 The arts and sustainably flourishing futures: selected examples of projects, initiatives, organisations roughly 1970-present, focused on impact. A report for and contribution to SCALE/LeSAUT Policy Committee strategic planning. (unpublished) download
2014 “P” is for PRAXIS. A short paper for the ABCs of Multispecies Studies, an international symposium for the Multispecies Salon. Text: http://www.multispecies-salon.org
2012 Cartographies sans Bornes: Maps without boundaries. In Canada's Raincoast at Risk: Art for an oil-free coast. Raincoast.
2012 Possible Worlds. In The Time is Now: Public Art of the Sustainable City. The Land Art Generator UAE. Page One.
2006 Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary Ecoart Practice and Collaboration. Canadian Commission for UNESCO (commissioned research report and preliminary paper for Arts in Ecology: A Think Tank on Arts and Sustainability
2006 PRAXIS: Acting as if Everything Matters. The ethics and transformative capacity of Ecological Art for sustainable futures: argument + analysis using 3 international case studies. Dissertation, Lancaster University
Reviewed Publications
2022. Culturing Community: Nurturing Urban Biocultural Diversity in the Wild West. In S. Kagan (ed) Culture and Sustainable Development in the City: Urban Spaces of Possibilities. London/New York: Routledge.
2021. A Compass Rose for the Anthropocene – New Maps for Old: Transforming Cultures for Sustainable Futures. (Artist-initiated practices + policy change: a case study) In C. Cartiere and L. Tan (Eds.) Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm. London/New York: Routledge
2003/2018 Returning the Radiant Gaze: Visual Art and Embodiment in a World of Subjects. (An ecophenomenological argument) Written in 2003, published without revision in The Goose 17:1
2013 Call and Response: Deep aesthetics and the heart of the world. In Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change: Hiking through the arts, ecology, religion and ethics of the environment. (Further exploring the idea of "deep aesthetics") LIT Verlag.
2013 Always Coming Home. The SongBird project: Pioneering ecological social sculpture & sci-arts collaboration in Canada. The Goose 12/13.
2009 Intimate Strife: The unbearable intimacy of human-animal relations. In Leonardo's Choice: Genetic technologies and animals. Springer.
2006 Art, Sweet Art. Alternatives Journal 32