What are the central themes in your “Meeting the Lough on its own terms” project?
Our story of evolutionary biology is interesting because of the way it maps a very particular view of the world, specific to the west, and in particular the UK. (George Monbiot’s book: The Invisible Doctrine is useful in addressing how these ideas developed in the UK.) as a mechanistic science that viewed nature purely as a resource to be taken from. The emphasis on the individual above the collective, riddles its way through neoliberal doctrine ever since, with the resultingly colossal disparity in wealth we see today. Ideas so incredibly privileging the 1% that you’d have been mocked outright, in decades gone by, are now regarded as completely regular: normalised and naturalised, by a very particular rhetoric. The extractive relations that you would associate with colonialism, are par for the course, these days. I mean, how strange is it that US and Brazilian investors in factory farming determine how much phosphorous is in a lough in Northern Ireland? Margulis would say we need to move on from this particular thought collective, because things don’t have to be this way – this is only one version of what’s possible.
My emphasis on decentring the human (not de-valuing), in a more multi-species approach, that begins with ‘sensing’ the lough in a variety of different ways, means acknowledging that we are just one of many species. Sensing what the creatures tell us about the conditions in the lough, at a microbial scale; nutrient content, or the over abundance of zebra mussels for example, what does the loss of chironomid flies tell us (Tommy Greene’s article in the Guardian), and most recently the eels getting too skinny to smoke, that has meant that fishing has had to stop – are all key indicators of an ecosystem in collapse. How this maps onto our financial systems is absolutely crucial to grasp, in my mind.
Unpacking how we got to this point, is actually really useful, because if you do this, it becomes really clear it doesn’t have to be this way. This version of reality is only one of many options. There has been a very quiet, but concerted effort to naturalise the most abhorrent economic policies under the guise of neoliberalism. The vulnerable ecosystem at Loch nEathach is an extraordinary example of how a mechanistic science views nature solely as a resource. And the consequences of this are that Loch nEathach is in such devastating plight.
Ancient Irish Breaghan law, for example, in stark contrast to English Common Law, is very interesting as it inscribes a collective relationship to water in poetry and rhyme, and its ideas like this that are now desperately needed. Thomas Muinzer speaks to this in some very eloquent ways, from the perspective of law today.
Evolutionary biology also has this idea of emergence underlying its entire history, shared with probability theory, integral to the problem of autopoiesis. How do you conjure a future with the spark of life, the creative intelligence necessary, in order to change the system?
The workshops we’ve held doing our collective writing draw together some of the stories that flow through the lough and have lead to thinking about how older technologies, such as indigenous, pagan and herbalist approaches, might lend insights into a more balanced approach regarding how to recalibrate our relationship with nature today.
We will be starting a reading group, focussing on N. Katherine Hayles work Bacteria and AI, and I wanted to draw this together with Monbiot’s work on neoliberalism, and Byung-Chul Han’s book Psychopolitics that explores how neoliberalism discovered the productive force of the psyche, with his book on the absence of rituals today. Here, Hayles’ work is important to me, who also draws upon Margulis’, in the sense that it opens up questions relating to the sentience of different species, amidst ideas of cellular cognition and meaning making in interactions with the environment. It’s so much more interesting to me than our current obsession with AI, to ask what kind of sentience might we be a part of, if we stop thinking of ourselves as the only species privileged with cognition.
We are going to be holding a ‘sensing’ the lough workshop the day after the exhibition opens at PS2, with Digital Arts Studios (DAS), thinking through how technology allows us to sense the lough in various ways, from a more multi-species perspective https://www.digitalartsstudios.com/whatson/ami-clarke-08-08-2025 How that informs new practices, new technologies, if you like, will be explored further with John D’Arcy and HIVE choir, in a sonic ritual jam, on the 5th September – all welcome. https://www.pssquared.org/projects/meeting-the-lough-on-its-own-terms
My small offering is just a site for thinking about these things, and is by no means finished. The video works, audio, and collective writing project that have been running for a year and a half, provide context for further conversations to develop and contributions to be made over the exhibition period.
A lot of my work is process based, even in something so seemingly ‘finished’ as video: its just one articulation, and no doubt there will be many more. This sits well with my way of working, including Banner Repeater, the gallery that has conjoined with the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing over the last few years. The conversations that will be had at PS2 gallery and DAS (who have been amazing – I cannot thank them enough), will travel to Banner Repeater in October, with further contributions from other artists also working in these ways.
To learn more about the work of artist Ami Clarke’s work see the links below.
