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 (unpublished) download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.
2008 Through the Eye of the Heart: In search of a "deep aesthetics". Conference presentation (juried). Thinking Through Nature: Philosophy for an endangered world, June 19-22, 2008. University of Oregon .
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