The Deep Field Project

The Deep Field Project engages with living landscapes, mapping and infrastructural analysis at a range of scales – globally, trans-locally, planetary, among others. 

We are a research studio expanding the aims of environmental art by supporting interdisciplinary fieldwork, situated knowledge practices, and site-specific inquiry in research-led artistic, cultural and social practices.  

Deep Field projects are not limited to visual spatial inquiry alone. Our sites of inquiry may involve embodied sensing (ecofeminist, multiperceptual) or include knowledge of ecological stewardship as well as more-than-human insights. They may be also be temporal (archival, deep time, quantum) or beyond reach (scalar, off-world). 

We initiate fresh inquiry to an expanded sense of environments by situating artistic production in a critical framework with ecology, science and technology.

Deep Field Project’s methods and outcomes include: studio based practices (such as fine art, photography, film, digital media); knowledge production (mapping, documentation, aesthetic inquiry etc); critical discourse (text or practice-driven portfolios of inquiry); and an engagement with theoretical, philosophical and social concerns (politics and action).

We work through acts of kinship and noticing, observation and constructive dialogue, and by shaping non-extractive constructive fieldwork alongside site and studio/desk based practices.

Ethical Inquiry

We acknowledge that access to land is an issue of both rights and responsibility to indigenous peoples. We also acknowledge that access to closed technological or scientific sites is a privilege sometimes exceptionally granted to artists, filmmakers, photographers. 

We locate sites of interest to build collective knowledges in support of the concerns of communities and voices marginalised by disciplinary and societal hierarchies.

PhD Research with Deep Field

Deep Field Projects support Graduate Research across and between disciplines. Our PhD candidates have been funded by University of Westminster Quintin Hogg Trust and the Techne 2 Doctoral Training Program funded by the AHRC. We also support independently funded PhD applicants, research by academic staff from other HE institutions as well as PhD by Publication by artists /academics whose practice is at an advanced stage and reflects or integrates with our aims and history in creating new knowledge.

Dr Diann Bauer1972 -2022 – An Appreciation

Diann Bauer

Dr Diann Bauer

The Deep Field Project would like to acknowledge the outstanding and unique input of our colleague Diann Bauer, who very sadly passed away on the 9th May 2022. As a Graduate Researcher, artist and friend of the Deep Field Project, Diann profoundly shaped our work, projects and future strategy and was a valued member of the Ecological Futurism collective, as well as the CREAM PhD community. She will be truly missed by us all.

Diann’s life and work was invested in how art, images and writing must be reconfigured for a time in which complex and unpredictable systems at scales surpassing direct human experience prevail. This symposium gathers artists, writers and thinkers who have been in conversation with Diann’s work formally and thematically. We will take her work as a generative challenge to build on her proposals on collectivity, imaging, time and temporality, sentience overloading, and the changing capacities to make alliances. 

Suhail Malik

“Cohesion was meant to hold. But reality started to slide.”

Dr Diann Bauer — An Appreciation

On Saturday 19 November 2022, at Ambika P3 and CREAM, University of Westminster, a remarkable hybrid event was held that was both a celebration and commemoration of the artist, writer and CREAM researcher Diann Bauer (1972–2022). Many colleagues, academics and artists / friends shared their recollections and insights alongside a screening of some of Diann’s most seminal work. At the closing of the event, it was announced that Diann Bauer would be awarded her PhD in recognition of her work and contribution to knowledge in her field.

Acknowledgements and details of event

Neal White Suhail Malik Screening of moving image work by Diann Bauer. Presentations: Alliance of the Southern Triangle | Keller Easterling | Gary Zhexi Zhang | Stefanie Hessler | Helen Hester  | | Bridget Crone | Bassam El Baroni | Bahar Noorizadeh  | Andrea Phillips | Closing comments: Neal White | Lucy Rogers

With special thanks to Weaver: Victoria Ivanova