A Many-Handed Practice
Leisure, a collaboration between artists Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley, works toward a participatory democracy of objects and others. The artist duo’s cosmopolitics — Isabelle Stengers’ term for the collective worldmaking of human and nonhuman actors — emerges from responsiveness and responsibility (response-ability) to environments and their stories. In this essay, I interpret Leisure’s work and practice through a biosemiotic lens to call upon their example of responding to things — not just things that get in the way, but also those that assert their presence when we actively reach out and look for them.
