| Title | 6. ATTENDING TO FIREBUGS |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | ARTISTIC INVESTIGATIONS FOR RESPECTFUL CORRESPONDENCES |
| Contributor | Charlotte Dorn(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.63308/63878687083054.ch06 |
| Landing page | https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2025/03/04/meam-2/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Charlotte Dorn |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2025-07-01 |
| Long abstract | In this piece, Charlotte Dorn engages in a loving attention towards firebugs as a basis for an ethical aesthetic that she develops through multispecies ethnography enriched by still images, video, sound recordings, drawing and printmaking. This photo essay elaborates on how Dorn engages with concrete artistic methodologies, the photos are a selection of fieldwork registrations and their further artistic processing. The reader follows Dorn, through text and photos, from her fieldwork through to the analysis phase, where ideas on firebugs and multispecies worlds are further developed and rendered tangible through drawing, as well as wood- and linocut. Importantly, the slowness of the creative process gives space to let the fieldwork experience with firebugs sink in and come back to the sensory experience over and over again. Seeking to understand how firebugs inhabit the world, artistic practices here further knowledge production that connects rather than objectifies; taking a holistic approach toward experiences with animals gives space to cognitive, physical, sensorial and affective aspects of the encounter. The sponginess of artistic modes of perception leads to individual and multi-layered perspectives on animality. It also suggests that much of the non-human animal is not yet understood and remains mysterious. |
| Page range | pp. 140–155 |
| Print length | 16 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 12 illustrations |
Charlotte Dorn is an artist and researcher living in Brussels and doing an artistic Ph.D. at LUCA School of Arts and KU Leuven. She took her Masters in Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti die Napoli and her Bachelor in the Arts at the Académie des Beaux-Arts Nantes Métropole and the Universidad de Sevilla, Campus Bellas Artes. Her work is on display in exhibitions such as the Centrale for Contemporary Art in Brussels or residencies like the International Latgale Graphic Art Symposium in Daugavpils, Latvia. Dorn’s artwork mainly consists of printmaking. Through drawing and life observation, she approaches insect worlds, with a current focus on firebugs. Key interests in her research are empathetic engagement through images and through the creative process, as well as the representation of insects as actants and processes.