비인간 증인: 인류세 시대 상호 돌봄의 장으로 기능하는 예술적 전략과 실천

Abstract

The disasters that surround us in the world of the Anthropocene are the result of the interplay of military warfare, the pursuit of strategic interests by states, the relationship between multinational giant platform-based information and communication companies, and the resulting ecological crisis. Their scale and complexity can no longer be predicted by human wisdom alone. Moreover, the roots of these intertwined disasters are deeply rooted in the historical foundations of settler colonialism, capitalism, and militarism. Thus, only by acknowledging the long-standing ‘witnessing of nonhuman beings’ across generations can we create the forms of knowledge and relationships necessary to overcome the catastrophic crises we face. In recent years, in radical theories such as Speculative Realism that consider the interlocking crises of the contemporary world, the concept of nonhuman witness has been developed to bring nonhuman beings and phenomena into the space of witnessing, giving agency to things that have been denied or limited in previous theories of witnessing. This paper focuses on three examples of artistic interventions involving ‘nonhuman witnesses’ in testifying to the climate crisis and historical events, particularly disasters intertwined with political violence, ethnic conflict, war crimes in the Anthropocene : 1) 《Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC)》, an art project by Dutch artist Jonas Staal and Indian lawer and activist Radha D’Souza, which seeks to imagine a new legal imaginary for multispecies justice, with the aim of creating a ‘more-than-human tribunal.’ 2) Hong Soun’s painting series 《Sidescape》, which depicts niche landscapes of disaster sites not commonly captured by the media, bringing nonhuman beings and phenomena such as nature and objects into the space of witnessing; and 3) 《Speculative Cartographies》, a research, creation and exhibition project of Counter Memory Activism that visualizes and commemorates the traces of Holocaust Jewish victims left in the ecosystem of southeastern Poland.