Trying To Cope With Things That Aren't Human (Part One)

About

Trying To Cope With Things That Aren't Human (Part One) places us in a familiar position, one where we often struggle to deal with the things around us, unable to completely understand how technology works but simultaneously unable to truly understand the beauty of nature. We remain confused but still standing - between the things that we have made and the things that we have not, what could be called the invented world and the natural world. We struggle to understand the natural world without ourselves in it; so we turn away to the security of the invented world, the one that we have created. We may find problems in the working out of sophisticated designs but, as much as enduring a wilderness, the most minor of domestic tasks can become a difficult exercise in personal maintenance and survival. To the extent that it discusses difference, this exhibition also tries to find the common ground, or indeed the threshold, between our ability to cope with the things that we have created, to make our lives easier, and our struggle to relate to the wonders of the natural world. We find it equally as difficult to comprehend the beauty of a vast landscape as we do the best way to use a computer, or indeed to know how it works. It is maybe only right that both the invented world and the natural world could also be equally and simultaneously called non-human. Often viewed as a dichotomy, technology and nature actually have a fluid relationship, one which judders and jerks all the time, rubbing them up against one another. In many ways technology has allowed more of us to have access to the natural world but our own obsessions with our ability to invent often distracts us and allows us to ignore it. There is a publication which accompanies this exhibition and is available on request