(Re)Thinking Time: Materializing More-Than-Human Empathy in Student Teachers’ Video Artworks

Abstract

In this article, we explore space, time, and mattering in relation to empathy and nature by examining videos created by 10 undergraduate education majors attending university in Helsinki. Completed as part of a cross-curricular project between art and music students, the video artworks were inspired by a garden theme. Using arts-based, postqualitative methods, we trace relationships or threads of interconnectedness between empathy and nature, viewing them as entangled “spacetimemattering” events. Working in the intersection of arts and sciences, and inspired by new materialisms—specifically Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism—we rethink space and time in artmaking as spacetimemattering. Spacetimemattering, understood as a unified concept, reveals how artistic practices work to conjure heterogeneous understandings of empathy, involving more-than-human objects/materials/matter as entangled phenomena that transcend Cartesian dualisms. In concluding, we discuss implications as to why rethinking space and time as spacetimemattering is important for future art education and research practices.

Acknowledgments

We have agreed to share the video data referred to in this article. The DOI generated in connection with this submission will be linked to the data through Figshare. We offer special thanks to Michelle Schwartze and Brecht Donvil for transcending disciplinary boundaries and helping art educators integrate math and physics concepts.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).