Dominic Walker
Department: Geography
Discipline: Geography
Research Centre/Unit: College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Project Summary
My current project is based around Experimental Geography. It explores the interface between artists, institutions, and science and technology through engaging with experiments. In particular, the project considers how artists experiment with institutions to critique practices associated with particular spaces (such as museums, laboratories, and galleries), social arrangement (such as institutions), and forms of knowledge (such as Linnean classification).
The project re-frames the notion of experimenting, asking what it means to experiment in the social sciences, and the implications this has for institutions. Who gets to experiment? How? What does this do for the perception of science and the distribution of expertise?
I use a select group of artists operating at the intersection between culture, nature, technology and time as case studies. I have particular interest in two artist-founded institutions - the Center for PostNatural History and the Office of Experiments, both of whom are formed from their founders' conceptions of an institution and are seeking to invite reflection on attitudes towards different aspects of science and technology.
Supervisory Team
Professor Gail Davies
Professor John Wylie
Wider Research Interests
Further research interests include geographies of creativity, creative methodologies, forms of institutions and knowledge production relating to science and technology, geographies of institutions, artistic practice, power, conceptions of an Anthropocene, institutional relations, networks and assemblages (specifically Actor-Network Theory), historical geographies, and monstrous geographies.
Authored Publications/Reports
Walker, D.D. (28th August 2015) Atomic Age Rodents: in search of the first animals of the Anthropocene, Society and Space [online], available at: https://societyandspace.com/material/discussion-forum/greenhough-lorimer-and-yusoff-2015-ff-future-fossils-exhibition/walker-2015-atomic-age-rodents-future-fossil/, accessed 11/12/2015
Walker, D. D. (forthcoming) () Collaboration in creative place-making: Utilising local power geometries, In: Courage, C. and McKeown, A. (eds.) Creative Placemaking and beyond: a conversation between research theory and practice. , London: Routledge, [Invited contribution]