Notes on Human Nature

In 18th Century Europe, there were two main philosophical schools attempting to explain our existence and experiences: Rationalism and Empiriacism. In the first of his critiques, The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant evolves and defines metaphysics, and expands on these two schools of thought further, founding transcendental idealism. He wrote about two worlds we occupy: the external and the internal, with the internal world of our own perceptions, whereby the world as it appears to us exists so because our mind interprets it that way. The external, meanwhile, will never be known.

This text has always resonated with me and its ideas re-surfaced during the last few months of the pandemic, political upheaval, and chaos. Kant’s text puts forward the notion that what we believe as ‘nature’, ‘laws of nature’, and ‘pure reason’ is all shaped by our own mind, that we impose an order onto nature and not nature upon us, and it is with this mentality that the Self becomes the Ego. The use of the term ‘human nature’ insinuates discovery, discovery of facts and truth by us, instead of a creation of facts and truths. Creation, because our knowledge needs to fit into a larger framework to make sense for us: systematic construct. As an example, before you bake a cake, you must already know what a cake is and what it should look like. This is all in a basic nutshell of course.

It is Kant’s text I had on my mind when I looked at three very different works of Hiro Tanaka, Francesca Catastini, and Theo Ellison. Though very different in terms of their outputs, approaches, and intentions, they seem to me to be part of the same conversation. In the context of our time and in light of the Critique, what is on my mind is society before and during the pandemic, the Anthropocene, our controlling nature, us controlling nature, our need to define and present ourselves, and I also thought about us, individuals, in isolation—mental and physical—as much us in communities.

On Societies

If someone was assigned with taking a sampling of society, a sample that would show societal need to control, sculpt, and that longing to occupy and invade a space, it may be helpful to point them towards New York’s Times Square as a solid starting point. This diverse area is described by artist Hiro Tanaka as “composed of enormous elements between reality and fantasy, emotions, sounds, smells, time, space, and matter under different rhythms, speeds, and senses.” In his project Around 42nd and 7th, Tanaka presents transitory fragments of residents and visitors from different cultures, classes, and nationalities, in an overwhelming, oversaturated, and even frightening metropolis, making such a large space feel surprisingly claustrophobic.

The project’s snapshot-style images are complimented with collage work, pushing towards a total sensory overload, portraying not only a modern society, but also our preoccupation and engrossment with technology and the digital world. This work is quite different to Tanaka’s previous projects, including the one he is probably most well known for—Chicharron. However, his skilful edits are still present. The new collage work seems like a natural progression for Hiro, considering that what has worked very effectively in his previous works were the careful juxtapositions between the images he took.

This intuitive way of working has elevated Around 42nd and 7th to a more sensory level, whereby you can almost smell, hear, and feel all the elements within.

Political or societal commentary is not the intention of Tanaka’s work. In his own words, he is interested in “encounters...that emerge in a variety of contexts, through routine of everyday life or during the course of travelling.” He photographs his experiences and impressions, “going into familiar and unfamiliar scenes.” Regardless, looking at Around 42nd and 7th it’s hard not to notice or consider current systems, power relations, class, capitalism and materialism. However, possessions and objects do not always indicate greed or materialism. In this case, the objects—phones, 3d glasses, cameras, music players—all perform a role at the intersection of our societal relationships and interactions. The cultural objects within—posters, films, photographs—are all signifiers of our network and kinship. I am sure many of us, looking at this work now, are craving that buzz and even that discomfort of crowds, to feel that commonality and connection. Because, at the core of it all, we are not sequestered creatures, and having ultimately faced ourselves in the last few months, we now can rebuild ourselves back up, individually and as a society, deciding what is worth hanging onto, and what should be thrown away. Although each one of us represents a singular island, it is within a world that would not exist if not for our co- existence.

On Culture

A defining attribute of human beings is storytelling. We love stories and myths, which in turn allow us to enforce meaning and interpretation onto objects, situations, and even people. It is these stories that we use to explain ourselves and others, write philosophies, buy, sell, run campaigns, explain and excuse our behaviour, to interact, and, basically, to live. Somewhere here, we must be mindful of how these stories are used to influence us by those in power (and I don’t mean just political, governmental powers), how these stories are told and sold to us, and how we fit into someone else’s narratives. Art making is another defining attribute—for this purpose, what we define as art in the classical sense—is practiced by all cultures and societies, including the ability and drive to mould and manipulate ourselves, as well as our environment. Considering this, I wish to comment about the works of Francesca Catastini and Theo Ellison. Though very different practices, it is this tension between aesthetics and human behaviour, our ‘human nature’, that unites their stories.

In his recent works, Evolved Display and Erotomania, Ellison uses computer-generated imagery, in which he explores the relationship between artifice and display, while also drawing parallels between image-making and evolutionary psychology through the ritual of sexual display in birds. Evolutionary psychology focuses on explaining how evolution has shaped our behaviour. “In mapping it onto art-making, my images look back on themselves through the lens of sexual display and ornamentation”.

Evolutionary psychology is of course another example of imparted human knowledge onto behavioural studies, another way to construct a ‘human nature’. However, as Ellison himself says “whether or not this theory completely cashes out is not really my focus, it’s more about the consequences of the idea—how it might change how we see image-making and art-making.”

In contrast to photography— again, let’s go with a traditional understanding—where the images are taken, Ellison utilises CGI to construct his video and images, combining software and pre-gained knowledge of how objects in real life react to light. What he refers to as a “reverse- engineering of images.” Image making is not truth photography and any lens-based practices are not truth, in as much as storytelling is not truth. Contrivance has always been an integral part of image-making, as subjectivity is an integral part of storytelling and thus truth-making.

There is no such thing as truth, and what Ellison’s work is further showing us is that our new realities and new truths are now engineered by technologies. He brings into example the IKEA catalogue, which is “almost entirely comprised of CG-rendered products”. Convincing CGI is no longer “just the preserve of high-budget film productions anymore, it has seeped into everything.”

Catastini and Ellison present very different narratives commenting on our human impulse to objectify; to sculpt and create objects and environments to represent and reflect ourselves. With Petrus, Catastini created a sort of a contemporary, visual version of a Bildungsroman that is universal rather than personal, with Bildung physically represented by sculpture and raw materials. In this project, Catastini documents the life and possessions of her neighbour Albrecht, while also reflecting on the influence of images on our upbringing, the images absorbed during our education, and the symbolisms we carry on to project meanings. Her images go beyond literal or metaphorical meanings, presenting new associations and correlations. One of my favourite moments in the project is the Venus de Milo versus le Grande Gendarme. The Venus we see is sculpted out of butter, by Catastini herself, speaking to a fluidity and malleability of form, aptly pointing out that form is never stable, but rather, as she reflects “ever-changing result of a never-ending tension between forces pushing from within and pressures coming from outside.” With Evolved Display, Ellison uses CGI as a technology born from our obsession to not just create our reality, but to recreate it. As he explains “Our desire to recreate what’s around us is so strong it won’t be fulfilled until we have achieved a ‘perfect’ virtual mimesis completing the shift from the photo to the photo-real.”

On Knowledge

Ultimately, Catastini and Ellison are presenting their ideas on the relationship between empirical knowledge and rationalism, objectivity and subjectivity. As Catastini puts forth, “What we call knowledge is exactly one way to interpret things, one possibility out of infinite ones. I’d love us to remember we do not know anything.” Both their practices are rooted in our human impetus to get to the roots of our individual and societal origins. They are conscious of their subjectivity, and with that awareness ask and present ideas on why and how we create, how we consume, how we occupy space, and how we use our individual senses and experiences to influence our truths.

In Catastini’s previous work The Modern Spirit is Vivisective, through photographs from, and of, anatomical theatres alongside found images, she deconstructs the concept of knowledge, tracing its history. What is clear is that it is man-made, and I emphasise man, as Western knowledge is a white male- driven creation. “This perspective has prevailed for centuries, so it can’t stop to influence our culture all of a sudden” in Catastini’s words “unfortunately it’s simply impossible”. With Petrus, she speaks of a particular rhetoric of masculinity in Western culture, but this time attempting to blur the boundaries between what we consider male and female. As part of this, a lot of the objects appearing in the project are indeed not the owner’s, but hers, therefore undermining and “diluting masculinity clichés”, while also speaking to the symbolic capacity of objects, to which we give weight based on our individual experiences. When seeing the represented objects, it’s easy for us to engender specific meaning onto them by recognising most of the objects as, for example, masculine or feminine— to construct an identity around them, but, to reflect on Catastini’s words “this difference between recognising and knowing is vital for the whole work. The thing according to what we culturally share is not the thing for what it actually is.” And it is this we have to realise and remember—our laws of nature, as we understand and create them, only exist because our mind interprets them. Our mind, that is influenced and triggered by our upbringing, our education and origins, like a code being input into us from birth into adolescence.

The last few weeks have seen a lot of agony, trauma, and chaos. The US launched astronauts for the first time aided by a private company, while simultaneously, the power- buzzed US police have murdered more innocents. At the same time as people are being maimed and arrested during anti-racism protests, agonising and ugly racist stories are being uprooted closer to home in Ireland, especially shameful are those from within the Direct Provision system.¹ Of course, these outbursts of injustice and abuse are not new, especially they are not new to those who have been victims of the justice system since the beginning of time. However, we are, at the same time, in the height of a global pandemic and the energy has shifted, you can truly feel the discontent and ‘enough-ness’. These last few months have also seen an immense coming together of communities, locally in neighbourhoods, and globally in response to the traumas. In some ways, the pandemic has brought out the best in us, but it also exposed a lot of corruption and ugliness. Great new initiatives to help the less fortunate were set up quickly, selfless donations of time and money were generously provided, governments stepped up; it seems we have come together more tightly than before, in appreciation of what we have and the strong sense of urgency to save and preserve it.

I referred to ourselves as being sort of programmed, or coded, through our education and upbringing, which in turn we define as our ‘human nature’, as if it’s been like this forever, as if it’s beyond our control. We often use it to justify our actions and our prejudices. Can we break this code? I believe it starts with awareness. Awareness to recognise and acknowledge our subjective perceptions.

It is through this awareness and willingness to hack the code that we gain empathy for our fellow humans and take appropriate actions to become part of a functioning healthy ecosystem instead of central Egos. I believe that is something we should strive towards, and let empathy dictate our actions.

Find out more at:

‍@hiro.tanaka.7545

‍francescacatastini.it

‍theoellison.com