Publications//Zines

There is No Such Thing as Nature

Artist Statement

[DES206 – Photomedia curation | Task 3 – Portfolio Project | 2025]

“What are the heritages of our perspectives and what are their implications for ourselves and the Other? There is No such Thing as Nature is a walk through the philosophical ecology of identity and subjectivity, questioning the assumptions we have about who we are and the credence we lend to our ideas about the world. Drawing on a diverse range of inspiration and supporting material, from psychoanalysis and quantum physics to ethnopharmacology and Surrealism, this anthology of poetic champloo explores the implications of Nature as an idea and how it, not only provides the great existential drama that defines our ontological context, but is ultimately a product of our own making – of our design. Nature’s anthropological origin means this is ultimately about humans and their minds; how unconscious mismanagement of one’s mind results in a vast cognitive dissonance that cleft’s one from all native sense and reason, causing us to crave that which harms and fear that which heals (Tolle, 2003).

The creative process for the project was guided by a methodology that combines the lubricated psychological synthesis of Surrealist automatism with the revealing nature of psychoanalytic free-association, akin to Dali’s controversial Paranoiac-Critical method (Surrealism Today, 2023). The aim of this was to enable an emergent textual synthesis of ideas that have been intuitively associated with the photography. The thesis for this project is one, I discovered, that would require a much larger, and more textually-forgiving, format to sufficiently articulate. As such, my hopes for engaging with the techniques was to have the synthesising capacity of my mind to the ‘heavy lifting’ for me and produce less structured/descriptive and, perhaps, more resolved chunks of prose, the content of which is produced within the context of free association with the photography.

Photographically, I am happy with the images I created and the diversity within its theme without straying too far from cohesivity, even though some are more vibrant and colourful, I believe it represents the many facets of the conceptual thesis. Using the described techniques, facet titles was associated with each photo. These titles then inspired the prose of each image. The association of photo and title varies in strength. Despite my satisfaction with the results of the Surrealist techniques, there is a lack of strong connectivity between the photography and the concept as a whole. I was unable to produce photographs that effectively communicated the thesis concept without the support of “wading through dense philosophical text ” (King, 2025) and citations. Somewhere along the way I forgot this was a photography assignment, prioritising the development of the thesis over its meaningful relevance or association with the photography. This is something I have noticed within my creative expression and that I believe is associated with neurodivergence but, importantly, can be managed skilfully by proper planning and taking breaks to check in with the process and assess whether it aligns with the plan or if revision is required.

A personal takeaway from the assignment was the acceptance of not needing to produce my best work ever, only try to produce the best work I can right now and be excited about its relative quality and its implications for the quality and depth of future work. This enabled me to have more fun and not get too worried about it being perfect. This influenced the development of the thesis and its partial eclipse of the project’s photography. I am new to photography, having only made a creative habit of it at the start of this school year, and to developing intentional theses for creative works instead of retroactively fitting them to satisfy task requirements. The concept for this ended up being wildly more profound, interpenetrating, and universal than I initially intended. Therefore, I am happy with it for the sake of what it is. At some point I began to value it as its own creative project with deep personal significance outside of the context of DES206 and willing to sacrifice whatever marks for the opportunity to explore this idea and the unique experience of designing and producing the physical artefact.

Marking staff need not read the ‘Artefact Context’ and can skim through the prose on each page (approx. 200w each). The glossary is there for anyone else that will read this and is not a product of any assumptions about staff ability or capacity. The orientation of the image is denoted by a white line representing the bottom of the image.

I do hope that I didn’t stray too far from the scope of this project, however, I have resolved to accept all consequences of my creative PDA and the feedback from the experienced professionals. I apologise if the text-heaviness slows down the exhausting process of final assessment marking. But, most of all, I hope that whoever marks this sincerely finds it meaningful or thought-provoking. This project meant a lot for me (still does, lol) and it represents the kind of thing I think I can give to the world that will help heal the eyes that see it, hopefully.

Thank you !! x

- Marley Polowyj-Stephen”