Rachel Holmes
Contact
- Email: k1938305@kingston.ac.uk
- Location: Penrhyn Road
- Faculty: Kingston School of Art
- School: School of Arts, Culture and Communication
- Department: Department of Humanities
- Personal website
Research project: The Language of Birds
Abstract
Drawing from ethnobotanist Dale Pendell and anthropologist Eduardo Kohn to develop a methodology to represent beyond-human communication, in the mythopoetic tradition. Applying this to a semiotic construction of human and non-human relations, gauged in the "language of birds" – chance, fortune and pre-linguistic modes of communication, including dream. Identifying the body as the site of dreaming, and drawing from Georges Bataille to characterize the "lacerated body" as ritualistically cultured.
- Research degree: PhD
- Title of project: The Language of Birds
- Other research supervisor: Dr Daniela Perazzo
Biography
I am a Chinese/Irish artist, writer and doctoral candidate, with research interests in "anthropology beyond the human", ecstatic experience and anti-capitalist theory. I am influenced by forms of rejected knowledge including the occult as a feminist practice, dream theory, and animism. My interests are informed by my academic background in philosophy, and practices with visual arts, performance and creative writing.
Areas of research interest
- Beyond Human Anthropology
- Environmental Semiotics
- Dream and body
- Exclusion and alienation
- Eduardo Kohn
- Dale Pendell
- Georges Bataille
Qualifications
- MRes: Art, Theoy & Philosophy (Distinction) from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
- BSc: Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method (Honours) from London School of Economics
Funding or awards received
- TECHNE studentship for doctoral study
- Nordic Culture Point (2019)
- Nordic Culture Fund (2018-2019)
Publications
Holmes, Rachel (2021) The Crow: Nameless Ones of the Dream Zone. In: Connole, Edia and Shipley, Gary, (eds.) Acéphale and Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century: Responses to the "Nietzsche event". London, UK : Schism Press. pp. 125 - 150. ISBN-13 : 979-8524109163
Holmes, Rachel Adeline (2021) The Butterfly Dream. Glasgow, UK : Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers Press.