Critique of the Aesthetic Sense of Nature | Stig L Andersson

Quite a few years back, I began to put pen to paper on what would be the first notes and records of what eventually became the theory of the Aesthetic Sense of Nature. In 2014, I formulated the difference between the built and grown environment with the Empowerment of Aesthetics Exhibition in the Danish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. When referring to the grown environment, I refer to all the living matter that isn’t controlled and maintained in a particular form or condition. The view of the designed world, the aesthetic sense of nature, and the grown environment as complementary has since formed the foundation for my activities.
What began ten years ago is now compiled in this text. A text that gathers my reflections on, among other things, Kant’s philosophy, and thoughts on the beautiful, the sublime, and humanity’s capability of being affected, even change, through interactions with our surroundings. Most notably nature and its phenomena. Hannah Arendt’s view on the sense of community, Niels Bohr’s perspective on the complementary, and Asger Jorn’s view on our creative capabilities. The entire text is also inspired and affected by an ever-present yet implicit undercurrent of Chinese philosophy. These ideas, reflections, and perspectives on the world, life, and nature have shaped my perspective and work. My goal with this text is to gather this complex interplay of concepts and ideas to lay the foundation for a new and alternative understanding of our relationship with nature. I seek a new understanding of the relationship between it and us humans. I engage in thinking with other thinkers to find a new path that can free us from the notions currently preventing us from becoming free and living a life of freedom together with nature. Freedom is not just about doing what one feels like doing. Freedom as openness and forthcomingness. Freedom as showing empathy for everything, all species, and all life.