METALOGUE. Conversing across Student and Teacher, Human and Inhuman Relations

Abstract

Abstract This experimental piece of writing explores how a metalogue can open a space of conversation expressed across student and teacher, human and inhuman relations. Drawing on the metalogues between father and daughter in Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind, the performance of this metalogue seeks to disrupt habitual power relations and mix conceptual with material expression. Of central concern are the ways in which both materials and concepts are extracted for use in built environment industries and industries of higher education, begging the question of how to work ethically within material and educational industries. The metalogue performs unruly interruptions and contradictions of voices, following a flow of materials both conceptual and concrete to grapple with pressing environmental imbroglios. The structure of the metalogue is necessarily open-ended, avoiding specific recommendations or answers to problems, instead fostering a glimmering understanding of how entangled we are amid environmental relations.