Feral Interventions: Objects and Artworks on the Periphery

Abstract

Being an artist requires stamina and a certain level of subterfuge. I make sculptural objects and installations from found domestic objects, the detritus of feminine material culture sourced from flea markets and second-hand shops, stuff I term “feral objects”. To be feral usually implies an escape from domestication, although it could also imply abandonment and vulnerability. In order to survive in the wild, feral animals, plants and insects—and perhaps feral objects too—must develop adaptive strategies in response to their new environment; a process that can have unforeseen consequences. Often unexpectedly productive, anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing calls this process “feral effects”, the non-designed and unplanned-for consequences of imperial and industrial infrastructure. In 2023 I travelled to Norway with a suitcase of artworks to install in and around the island of Jeløya, including the gallery spaces and grounds of Galleri F15. This occupation of spaces and places beyond the parameters of the cultural institution was a feral intervention that took material form not entirely independent from, but as an intentional process of scavenging on the peripheries of the art world. For the three iterations of “The-Lost-and-Found” symposium that took place in Lisbon, Warsaw and Riga between December 2023 and June 2024, I travelled with artworks in my suitcase to opportunistically install feral interventions in and around the symposium venues. Understood in this context as a feminist position, feral interventions allow for evasion and unpredictability, for creative resistance to systems of control, and for the potential to undertake adaptive art-working strategies. Through analysis of the feral interventions undertaken, this article investigates how the versatility of artist and artwork might accommodate peripheral practices of exhibition and display