Photographic document taken by the artist of her body and surroundings.
The erotic is a source of inherently female knowledge-power. It is a compass; a secular spiritualism derived from deep feeling; a philosophy for embodiment; being put into practice; and an ethic for encountering ourselves and each other in the world. Engaging our erotic selves creates an openness to being fully embodied, to profound self-connection without myopia. Autotheory is the practice of non-hierarchically engaging with art, theory, and life from the perspective of lived experience. The self–our innermost being and embodied knowledge–acts as a locating device, diving board, kite string or tether into the im/material present and possible that engaging in such modes of inquiry may bring into being. I have come to see the erotic as the poetic of autotheory.
At the intersection of philosophy and science, my research traverses medicine, biochemistry, geology, and physics. Guided by my body and its illness, I wonder at questions like: What are the biopossibilities of rethinking bodies and illness through the lens of the molecular-erotic; What new ‘lines of flight’ may emerge from within this new ethics of encounter? Adopting an openness to ruminations along these lines is the first step in re/learning the world and one's body within it as ontologically flexible entities. I have begun to recognize molecules, cells, viral and inorganic matter as possessing distinct autonomies, for example, a recognition that has brought wonder to illness.
At home and in the studio, I tie my illness around me and dive into theories of animacy and molecular feminisms attempting to visit via envisaging the myriad molecular animacies that comprise us all. Theory has become a peculiar and unexpected sort of healing channel as it transitions from elusive concept into a cultivated, applied biophilosophy and meditation. I call this feeling with–, and I find it useful not only in encountering the body and its illness, but in encountering others in the world in which we are mutually e/affected and e/affecting. My research is a search for kinship across matter formations; my work offers wonder as a form of molecular healing.