Kettle, A., 2022.

Flight Lines

The work Flight Lines is both a reference to the proliferation of global connections made possible through manned flight, and contribute to rich dialogues between cultural sites and experiences. Simultaneously these flights (portrayed in the work from left to right) are implicated in unequivocal damage to the climate. The work references the natural world, presenting a flock of birds that migrates from right to left across the work and towards the moon hovering above. The flight of birds responds to the seasonal shifts, the changes of atmospheric and climatic conditions, whereas human flight is constant and relentless. The work asks us to negotiate these tensions and relationships as interconnected, part of rebalancing the interaction between human and natural agents. The work expands our ideas about being 'in common'.

Shown at in the 4th Hangzhou International Fibre art Triennial, the work sits within the curatorial frame of In Theoria which states, "The way that "art" -- as a special product of unique behavior and imagination -- occurs and exists may be essentially distinct from that of stable, solid materiality in real life. Art often wanders between being and non-being, as something on the way into existence, it is a "postponed-being...The term "Theoria" (??????) comes from Aristotle's categorization of basic activities of human: poiesis, praxis, and theoria. Among these three human activities (energeia), theoria, perceived as the highest, fullest life with meditation and observation, is the closest energeia to gods (theos). More importantly, theoria has been existing in the uncertain, unshaped "cache" before "theory"--a doctrinaire, solidified being."

FlightLines acknowledges this exchnage and rebalancing of energy and formal and conceptual qualities. It marks a change in production and seismic shift in use of studio and fabrication resources, a critical contributor to climate change.