[ISEA2012] Artist Talk: Silvana Carotenuto — Female Kosmos: an Archive of Natural Elements

Artist Statement

“Female Kosmos: Planetary Writing” by Silvana Carotenuto. The planet is in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet, we inhabit it, on loan (G.C. Spivak). The talk is interested in contemporary female writing devoted to nature, specifically reading the artistic-ecological sensibility of women when confronted with the cosmos. It sets its political agenda within the theoretical framework offered by some critical ‘intuitions’ of the planet (Spivak, Clement, Shiva), and then it reads the poetic evocations of natural elements (earth, water, fire and air) in the writing (a ‘enlarged’ – oral, prosodic, plastic, radical – concept of writing) of Hélène Cixous, Rony Horn, Jamaica Kincaid and Helen Oyeyemi. The intervention will provide examples from narrative, photography and visual installations.