The title of the show Erotic Ecologies is borrowed from Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology by bio-philosopher Andreas Weber. Weber urges us to live with a perspective from ‘the inside of life’ by paying attention to the corporeal experience of being alive rather than as analysing machines standing apart from the world. The drive toward both attachment and autonomy is the fulfilment of what he calls an ‘erotic encounter, an encounter of meaning through contact, an encounter of being oneself through the significance of others’ (pxiii). Far from a straightforward or romantic idea, this is a challenging and complex relationship of opposites, which, when in “proper balance” creates sparks of “enlivenment” – enlivenment is the sign of creative breakthrough beyond the mindset of measurement and comparison.

Weber’s ideas seem to resonate with processes of making an individual work, which has autonomy as a ‘work’ but only works through contact, touch, desire and the enfolding of all that is outside. We have thought about his ideas as we put our exhibition together, as we have tried to create new contacts and relationships between work, gallery space and viewer.