Second Nature by Damien Laing

Damien Laing is an urban planner and member of the 16mm film collective Artist Film Workshop.

Explorations of the anthropocene are all present and this proposal is similarly interested in the ability to conceptualise nature, but takes as its launching off point the philosophical concept of ‘second nature’ that appears and is modulated in the works of Hegel, Lukacs and Adorno. To ask, what it means that the ‘human world’ nestles on top of nature, supplanting and veiling it. That no image on a wall truly exceeds comprehension, due to the ordering of perception that has been inculcated through education.

The exhibition of darkroom prints displays the adapted nature of the gardens and spaces of Wyndham and is witness to how the new becomes naturalised. It speculates if it is possible to puncture this second nature and yet rehearses its own defeat producing yet another image that represents and, in that representation, naturalises the unusual object of representation again. Allowing through the artful display, to be reunited with the normal. This is the process of reification in which attributes start to appear ‘as if’ they were natural. His intention through acting out this process is to point to this process even when I’m not able to offer an escape.

Image credit Damien Laing as part of the exhibition