GMU:Sustainable Aesthetics/Viviane Morais Dantas

SUSTAINABILITY IN AESTHETICS

Art as a medium requires material to be done. Being it physical or digital, being it made on paper or using electric energy, the trace it leaves on the world is more than the poetical/subjective one. In days like these, when we question more and more the exhaustive human impact on the environment, it looks essential to have a less hypocritical attitude on this topic.

My point of view on sustainability in aesthetics is pretty literal. Normally, we put the concept above everything in our art practice and, then, if we manage to make it more ecologically right on time (and on budget), it's a plus. So first of all, I guess that to be really committed to sustainability, we have to focus on the practical ecological part as much as we do it with the conceptual phase - understanding that it will always be a matter of choice and calculus, as we'll always impact nature somehow.

Second, to be sustainable it is needed to be coherent. So, personally, even being very interested in forms of media art that is completely based on recycling, I know that I need some materials that cannot be recycled, for example. So it is better for me to understand your practice, acknowledging your process and looking for ways of making it less harmful than to try to abolish some types of art in oder to make it more ecological and start to make art that does not resonate with your own feelings.

IDEA 1. PRINTING ON RECYCLED TEXTILE

aesthetic

borrowed from New Latin *aestheticus,*  borrowed from Greek *aisthētikós*  "of sense perception, sensitive, perceptive," from *aisthētós*  "sensible, perceptible" (verbal adjective of *aisthánomai, aisthánesthai*  "to perceive, take notice of, understand," going back to **awis-th-,*

 base of Greek *aḯein*  "to perceive, hear" + *-th-,*  resultative noun suffix) + *-ikos* (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-ic#etymology)

"o futuro é ancestral" Ailton Krenak

Between the fact and the affection, there is my practice. So I'll start with the affection.

My grandmother from my mother's side was a seamstress and I grew up seeing sewing as a labor, a maintenance of mental health, more than the fashion aspect of it. When she lost part of her vision due to an unsuccessful surgery - this, for me, was the moment when my grandmother begun to die, even though it happened around 6 years before her death. Sewing sustained her life.

This got the back of my head and, now, practicing the purest form of aesthetic - which is to perceive -, I'm looking back trying to understand my contradictions. Always very fascinated about fashion and clothes, I could never get how could it hit me so deeply, me being someone that cares about sustainability since my childhood. Waste was always a topic on my mind, so how can a support such a dirty industry?

Sometimes we talk about being sustainable as if it was just a matter of (f)act, of following the right input. But we have our deepest emotions, habits and memories anchored

Every step we take impacts nature, every stone taken out of place.

So let's go to the fact: textile waste.

Textile production is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of global clean water (pollution from dyeing and finishing products).

IDEA 2. BODY ARCHIVE