Camus, Josefina. 2024. I am the surroundings I inhabit. Situational identity, somatic experience and more-than-human environment.. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

Each territory has singular cultural, social, and ecological features. This research explores the relationship between identity and territory, and how territories affect identity. Looking at identity from a somatic perspective, this project examines that category through the lens of corporeality, discussing how our perception influences our connection and disconnection with our surroundings.

The primary site for this research is artistic practice through the creation of various objects, events, and experiential installations in galleries, theatres, and cultural centres between 2017-2022. The practice has been based on a compositional work that explores the creation of multisensorial and immersive atmospheres, with specific protocols and scores to generate a space of participation and collective experiences, highlighting the connection with the surroundings. Including different media; sculpture, digital collage, sound, video, performance, and storytelling, these practices are in a liminal field between performance art, therapy, and ritual.

Autotheory and cues from autoethnography accompany the practice research where I consider my history and situational identity, which is in transformation through displacements. The writing reflects on the influence of the surroundings, narrating my experience of inhabiting diverse territories, from my country of origin, Chile, in South America, to Europe, living in Paris and London and later, in the forest and rural villages around Valdivia in the South of Chile.

The research aims to expose the somatic experience and its connection and disconnection with the surroundings. From this potential, the project approaches non-Western knowledge around Tao and Mapuche philosophy, cosmology, and practice. Based on my autoexperimentation and theories related to the subject, the project examines how the approaches to non-Western epistemologies allowed me a process of reconnecting with the land and acceptance of my biography as a decolonial gesture.

The project does not give a fixed definition to identity. Its contribution is to contemplate the relationship between culture and nature from a South American ecofeminist perspective, opening up a reflection around non-Western epistemologies, and exploring how they operate through the feeling of interdependency and connection with ecosocial surroundings. Giving a sense of collective identity between humans and more-than-humans, the contribution is to expand the notion of identity towards a sense of togetherness.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00037225
Keywords:	somatic, experience, more-than-human, environment, ecofeminism, South American, non-western, identity, ecology
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Art
Date:	30 June 2024
Item ID:	37225
Date Deposited:	05 Jul 2024 14:46
Last Modified:	05 Jul 2024 14:54
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37225

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