6.5 Minutes With... | Yevgeniya Kaganovich

In this episode, Jennifer Johung, director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, spends 6.5 minutes with Yevgeniya Kaganovich, a Belarus-born, Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based artist, whose hybrid practice encompasses jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture, and installation. She is also a professor at the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  

Kaganovich discusses her on-going projects and installations at the Lyden Sculpture Garden and explains the implications of tree time, earth time, and human time within the context of C21’s theme of Slow Knowing. Her collaborative research and art project, Slow Growing in the Time of Trees, explores three archetypes – trees, paper, and chairs – through their own unique perspectives. She asks speculative questions in search of physical answers. Like, does paper remember being a tree?  

Check out the links below for more information about C21’s collaborative with Slow Growing in the Time of Trees, Kaganovich’s Tree Intuit Chair project, and further reading about the agency and perspective of non-human objects.  

Lyden Sculpture Garden Events:  

Tree Intuit Chair  

In Tree Intuits Chair, artist Yevgeniya Kaganovich grows saplings into sculptural chairs, imagining how a tree might perceive its own transformation into furniture. 

Slow Growing in the Time of Trees: Tree and Mushroom Walk: 

Artist Yevgeniya Kaganovich and Lynden land manager, Robert Kaleta, lead a walk exploring the symbiotic relationship between trees and mushrooms. 

Recommendations for Further Reading: 

Vibrant Matter  

Author Jane Bennett argues that non-human objects, from trees to trash, possess a form of vitality or agency, challenging anthropocentric views of materiality. She calls for a political and ethical shift, urging us to recognize and engage with the vitality of matter to address ecological and social issues. 

Allien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing 

Author Ian Bogost explores the idea of "object-oriented ontology," which asserts that objects, whether human or non-human, exist independently of human perception and have their own experiences. He advocates for a shift in philosophy to consider the subjective experience of all things, encouraging us to think about the world from the perspective of objects themselves.