Animism and Artefact: The entangled Agencies of a DIY [Do-It-Yourself] Maker
Emit Snake-Beings · Visual Ethnography · 2018
Using images from my own creative practice, the entangled agencies of DiY [Do-it-Yourself] making are expressed through a messy, intuitive and exploratory engagement with materials. The combination of animism and material are used to describe a techno-animist approach to technology and investigated visually through notebook sketches, photographs of the workshop and the artefacts produced, highlighting parallels between the material turn and more ancient belief systems which recognise a spirit or life force within objects. The notebook is of particular importance as a space of creativity and as a support for mental processes: an ‘extended mind’ of material agency which plays an important role in the production of artefacts. As an ethnography of both materials and human practice this article challenges the human-centred focus of autoethnography, or self-ethnography, acknowledging materials as active forces in the production of artefacts. DiY maker culture offers a unique contemporary context in the generation of a type of knowledge which is contained within both human and the material substances of the artefact.