Human society spends a lot of time and energy combating its natural origins. When an aspect of humanity bears too many markers of a natural process we either privatize it or ritualize it. Those are the grounds for culture’s existence.
It is this seam between nature and culture that I am interested in exploring. It is a virtually indefinable territory, because it permeates every corner of our lives. Every aspect of the dialectic is in response to its opposite. I have selected only a small portion of the myriad possible interactions to investigate. The modes of presenting my findings are diverse, reflecting the ubiquity of the subject. I employ drawing, photography, installation, objects, sound, and video.
The potholes that I’ve cast are a collaboration of human and non-human forces. The human system of cars and the natural systems of climate, and geography work in tandem. Is this nature or is it culture? It is a fairly inconsequential question, but interesting to me for the evidence it presents of the slipperiness of the subject.
I do not mean to imply any directions for how anyone should act, only to explore the underlying principals of how human culture is constructed, and how it relates to the natural systems that are in place. I see ecology as the system with which an organism interacts with its environment. In that sense, my work is entirely ecological.
Fritz Horstman
January 2011