Animism in Art and Performance

This book explores Maori indigenous and non-indigenous scholarship corresponding with the term ‘animism’. In addressing visual, media and performance art, it explores the dualisms of people and things, as well as 'who' or 'what' is credited with 'animacy'. It comprises a diverse array of essays divided into four sections: Indigenous Animacies, Atmospheric Animations, Animacy Hierarchies and Sensational Animisms. Cassandra Barnett discusses artists Terri Te Tau and Bridget Reweti and how personhood and hau (life breath) traverse art-taonga. Artist Natalie Robertson addresses korero (talk) with ancestors through photography. Janine Randerson and sound artist Rachel Shearer consider the sun as animate with mauri (life force), while Anna Gibb explores life in the algorithm. Rebecca Schneider and Amelia Jones discuss animacy in queered and raced formations. Stephen Zepke explores Deleuze and Guattari's animist hylozoism and Amelia Barikin examines a mineral ontology of art. This book will appeal to readers interested in indigenous and non-indigenous entanglements and those who seek different approaches to new materialism, the post-human and the anthropocene.

Christopher Braddock is an artist, a writer, and Professor of Visual Arts at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. He co-leads the Ph.D. and M.Phil. programmes and the Art & Performance Research Group. He is author of Performing Contagious Bodies: Ritual Participation in Contemporary Art (Palgrave, 2013).