a personal world or home. Dwelling
incorporates environments and places
but extends beyond them, signifying our
inescapable immersion in the present
world as well as the possibility of reaching
beyond to new places, experiences and
ideas’ (Seamon and Mugerauer 1985: 8).
97
Garrard (2004) identifies dwelling as a key trope in ecological literary work and writes about it as ‘not a transient state; rather, it implies the long-term imbrication of humans in a landscape of memory, ancestry and death, of ritual, life and work’ (108). The previous chapters have identified the bio-urban as a provocation to consider the context of ecological performance work, and theorised immersion as characteristic of an ecological performance aesthetic. Dwelling is based on the idea of immersion in the more-than-human world and considers the way in which we live immersed and imbricated in ecological relationships. This chapter will theorise the way in which ecological performance is underpinned by philosophical conceptions of home and dwelling. In order to address the current ecological crisis, ‘we must ask what human dwelling on earth is and how it is possible to have a home’ (Seamon and Mugerauer 1985: 1). In other words, the concept of dwelling asks how we live on earth, where we live and how we think about it in relation to home. These questions of how and where we live contribute to an understanding of our place within the mesh of ecological relationships. I will theorise the way in which these concepts are engaged within an aesthetic of ecological performance. The argument developed in this chapter is that ecological performance can manifest, disclose and critique ideas of home and dwelling, from western and indigenous viewpoints.
The idea of home is central to ecological discourse as the Greek root of ‘eco’ is oikos, meaning home or dwelling place. This chapter will explore the way in which ecological performance is underpinned by a view (or views) of the world and home (or oikos), and an extended conception of home that includes the whole planet. There are many ways of thinking about the concept of home (for example sociological, anthropological, gendered, geographical), but here I am interested specifically in ecological ways of thinking about home. This may relate to the social, ideological and political formations of home, but only in so far as they are bound up with the ecological. Therefore, this chapter will not constitute an in-depth review of ways of thinking about home. Rather I will briefly consider a number of key concepts of home all relating to ecology and dwelling, which I will then theorise in relation to specific examples of performance practice. The enquiry will be divided into three subsections, each stemming from the idea of interrogating the ‘eco’ of ecology. In Oikos as Home, I will examine the ways in which the idea of home influences ecological performance, including the work of Fevered Sleep and the Trans-Plantable Living Room (2013), and how it might reveal or productively critique the idea of home. Home is a complex and contested concept, which is imbricated in a number of discourses including place as home, domesticity and nostalgia, all of which will be briefly considered in relation to ‘oikos’ and ecological performance. ‘Oikophila’, or love of home, will be considered in relation to Multi-Story Water (2012–13), with the idea
that ‘home on a domestic scale is inextricably bound to national and imperial geographies of home’ (Blunt and Dowling 2006: 51). In the final subsection, I will consider Chaudhuri’s geopathology (1995) and the concept of homelessness and deterritorialisation as a persistent idea within theatre that contributes to the perceived separation of human and nature.
Through post-Heideggerian thought, the subsequent section will scrutinise the concept of dwelling including the criticism of ecofascism and its influence on ecological thought, such as deep ecology and dark ecology. The Heideggerian concept of dwelling, which is the basis for dwelling in many ecological discourses, will be critiqued and put into dialogue with post- Heideggerian thinking by Zimmerman (1993), Lavery and Whitehead (2012) and Harvey (1996). I will then consider the dark ecology perspective on dwelling as a counterpoint to Heideggerian dwelling, by thinkers such as Morton (2009) and Žižek (1991, 2008), illustrated through the Dark Mountain Project and Stefhan Caddick’s The Nihilists (2011). Baz Kershaw’s Earth Rise Repair Shop Meadow Meander (2011–14) will offer a striking example of the way in which dwelling is conceived within ecological performance, paradoxically reinforcing and resisting Heideggerian dwelling.
Indigenous perspectives on dwelling will then be considered as problematising ethnocentric and colonial assumptions of western thought. Thinkers such as Ingold (2000) and Abram (1997) have suggested that indigenous cosmologies foster a different conception of the relationship between ecology and dwelling. Through a postcolonial reading of ecocriticsm, the trope of the ‘ecological Indian’ will be interpreted in light of cultural projects seeking to communicate indigenous knowledge. Drawing on examples from the Inuit and First Nations peoples of Canada, the Māori of New Zealand and Australian Aboriginals, I will consider how these views of dwelling are engaged with in text-based performances. Indigenous ecology in performance critiques western perceptions of dwelling through the inseparability of humans/ land/more-than-human world, non-linear conceptions of past/present/future, and ecological justice.
All of these different concepts and discourses revolve around the way we live (or dwell), and the way in which we perceive and construct our relationship to the more-than-human world. Examples of performance practice that engage, reveal and/or critique some of the above ideas will be theorised in relation to ecological thinking.